
Glass 



Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING 
OF NEW YORK 



1 



BY 

THOMAS A. JANVIER 

AUTHOR OF " IN OLD NEW YORK " 
THE CHRISTMAS KALENDS OF PROVENCE" ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED 




NEW YORK AND LONDON 

HARPER £r BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

1903 



THE LIBHARY OF 
CONO' ESS, 

Two Copies Re 

OCT 2 '903 

J % Copyright Entiv 
:lass tu XXc No ' 
COPY 0. 



Copyright, 1903, by Harphr & Brothers. 



y^// rights reserved. 
Published ( h tober, 1903 









ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

W. Wsselinx. (Avtevr van Westindise Com- 
pangi Aet. Svae 69. Ao. 1637) . Frontispiece 

Map of New Netherland. Circa 1616 . facing 20 

The West India Company's House, Haarlem- 
mer Straat, Amsterdam. 1623-1647 . facing 30 

The West India Company's Warehouse as 
seen from the oude schans, amsterdam. 
— (Built in the year 1641. Used as the Com- 
pany's meeting-place in the years 1647- 
1674) facing 46 

Earliest known View of New Amsterdam. 
Circa 1630. — Reversed (following Mr. J. H. 
Innes) from Joost Hartger's Beschrijvingh van 
Virginia, Nieuw Nederlandt, etc. . . . facing 66 

View of New Amsterdam. Circa 1650. Show- 
ing the Capske Rocks, now covered by 
Battery Park. — (From the Beschrijvingh van 
Amerika of Arnoldus Montanus. Amsterdam, 
167 1) facing 84 

The Town House (Stadt Huys), New York, 
1679. — (Redrawn from the Dankers and Sluy- 
ter drawing. See Memoirs of the Long Island 

Historical Society, vol. i.) facing 96 

iii 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACE 

The Visscher Map, with a View of New Am- 
sterdam drawn before the Year 1653 facing 112 

The Water Gate, foot of Wall Street. 1679. 
— (Redrawn from the Dankers and Sluyter 
drawing. See Memoirs of the Long Island 
Historical Society, vol. i.) facing 122 

The Allaerdt View of New York. Circa 
1668. — (From the map of Reinier and Josua 
Ottens) facing 138 

View of New York from Brooklyn Heights, 
1679. — (From the Dankers and Sluyter 
drawing) facing 166 

" The Duke's Plan," 1661-1664. (Photographed 
for this work from the original in the British 
Museum. Showing New Amsterdam in the 
year that it became New York) . . . facing 188 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING 
OF NEW YORK 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING 
OF NEW YORK 



ARTFUL fiction being more convinc- 
ing than artless fact, it is not likely 
that the highly untruthful impression of 
the Dutch colonists of Manhattan given 
by Washington Irving ever will be ef- 
faced. Very subtly mendacious is Ir- 
ving' s delightful History of New York from 
the Beginning of the World to the End of 
the Dutch Dynasty. Bearing in mind the 
time when he wrote — before Mr. Brod- 
head had performed the great work of 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

collecting in Europe the documents re- 
lating to our colonial history, and while 
the records of the city and of the State 
still were in confusion — his general truth 
to the letter is surprising. But precisely 
because of his truth to the letter are his 
readers misled by his untruth to the 
spirit. Over the facts which he was at 
such pains to gather and to assemble, he 
has cast everywhere the glamour of a be- 
littling farcical romance: with the result 
that his humorous conception of our an- 
cestral Dutch colony peopled by a sleepy 
tobacco-loving and schnapps-loving race 
stands in the place of the real colony 
peopled by hard-headed and hard-hitting 
men. 

Irving's fancy undoubtedly is kindlier 
than the plain truth. They were a rough 
lot, those Dutchmen who settled here in 
Manhattan nearly three hundred years 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

ago ; and they did not — the phrase is from 
our own frontier vocabulary — come here 
for their health. As has happened in the 
case of much later outpost settlements 
on this continent, they cheated the sav- 
ages whom they found in residence, and 
most cruelly oppressed them. Also, on 
occasion, they cheated one another; out 
of which habit, as is shown by the verbose 
records of their little courts, arose much 
petty litigation of a snarling sort among 
themselves. In a larger and more im- 
personal fashion, they consistently cheat- 
ed the revenue laws of the colony; and 
with a fine equanimity they broke any 
other laws which happened to get in their 
way — a line of conduct that is not to be 
condemned sweepingly, however, because 
most of the revenue laws of the colony, 
and many of its general laws, were unjust 
intrinsically and were administered in a 

3 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

manner that gave to those who evaded or 
who broke them a good deal in the way of 
colorable excuse. In a word, our Dutch 
ancestors who founded this city had the 
vices of their kind enlarged by the vices 
of their time. But, also, they had cer- 
tain virtues — unmentioned by Irving — 
which in their time were, and in our time 
still are, respectable. With all their short- 
comings, they were tough and they were 
sturdy and they were as plucky as men 
could be. Of the easy-going somnolent 
habit that Irving has fastened upon them 
as their dominant characteristic there is 
not to be found in the records the slight- 
est trace. I am satisfied that that char- 
acteristic did not exist. 

Certainly, there was no suggestion of 

somnolence in the promptness with which 

the Dutch followed up Hudson's practical 

discovery of the river that now bears his 

4 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

name. Hudson's immediate backers, to 
be sure, the members of the Dutch East 
India Company, took no action in the 
premises. They had sent him out to find 
a northerly passage to the Indies — and 
that he had not found. What he had 
found was of no use to them. The region 
drained by his great river was outside the 
limits of their charter; and trade with it 
did not promise — though promising much 
— returns at all comparable with those 
which were pouring in upon them from 
their spice-trade with the East. There- 
fore, his voyage having been a mere waste 
of theifc money, they charged off the cost 
of it to profit and loss and so closed the 
account — while the great navigator, be- 
ing seized by his own government out 
of the Dutch service, went off to sea 
again: on that final quest of his for the 
impossible passage to the east by the 
5 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

north that ended in his death in Hud- 
son's Bay. 

But when Hudson's report of the fur- 
yielding country that he had found was 
made public in Holland certain other of 
the Dutch merchants pricked up their 
ears. These were the traders who carried 
European and Eastern goods to Russia 
and there bartered them for Muscovy 
furs: a commerce that had its beginning 
toward the end of the sixteenth century, 
and that was greatly stimulated by cer- 
tain concessions granted by the Czar to 
the Dutch in the year 1604. Those con- 
cessions provided, in effect, that goods 
might be imported into Russia, and that 
goods to an equal value might be export- 
ed thence, on the payment of landing and 
loading duties of two and a half per cent. , 
while on exports above the value of im- 
ports a farther duty of five per cent, was 
6 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

laid: a tariff system which, for those 
times, was at once so liberal and so 
simple that it drew to Archangel a fleet of 
from sixty to eighty Dutch ships a year. 
But Hudson's exposition of the fur- 
trade possible in America made a still 
better showing. In dealing with ingenu- 
ous savages, unhampered by a govern- 
ment of any sort whatever, there would 
be no duties to pay on either imports or 
exports ; and instead of being compelled 
to give value for value — a custom that all 
traders of all times have resented — a ship- 
load of furs could be had for the insignif- 
icant outlay of a few jerry-made hatchets 
and some odds and ends of beads. (It is 
but just to the Netherlanders to add that, 
in the passing of the centuries, they have 
lost nothing of their acuteness in such 
matters: as is evidenced by their ability 
to get and to keep the weather-gauge of 
7 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

the unlucky savages of the Congo Pro- 
tectorate to-day.) And so, in the summer 
of 1610, certain merchants of Amsterdam 
— suffering no grass to grow under their 
feet — despatched to the island of Man- 
hattan a vessel loaded with " a cargo of 
goods suitable for traffic with the Ind- 
ians": and no doubt but it was a pre- 
cious lot of rubbish that they put on 
board ! 

I am sorry to say that the name of 
that first trading-ship sent to this port 
remains unknown. But the fact of her 
sailing is established, as is also the fact 
that her crew in part was made up of 
men who had sailed with Hudson in the 
Half Moon. Mr. Brodhead is of the opin- 
ion that she was commanded by Hudson's 
Dutch mate; and he cites the tradition 
that the Hollanders who came again to 
this island, and the Indians living here, 
8 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

were "much rejoiced at seeing each 
other " : a cordiality which — however rea- 
sonable it might have been on the side of 
the Dutch — showed that the savages had 
no endowment of prophetic instinct to 
warn them that the stars in their courses 
were righting against them, and that then 
was the beginning of their end. 

For my present purposes it suffices to 
say that the briskness with which that 
first trading voyage was undertaken and 
accomplished strikes the key-note of 
Dutch character. Keenness and alert- 
ness — not the drowsiness upon which 
Irving so harps in his persistent pleas- 
antries — were the personal and national 
characteristics of the people who founded 
this city; and who founded it, we must 
remember, in the very thick of their 
glorious fight for freedom with what then 
was the first sea power of the world. 
9 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

Those qualities clearly were in evidence 
in their despatch to Manhattan — almost 
on the instant that Hudson's report of 
his discovery was made public — of that 
little nameless merchantman: with the 
coming of which into this harbor, solely 
as a trader, the commerce of the port of 
New York began. 



II 



THERE was a nice touch of prophetic 
fitness in the fact that the very first 
product of skilled labor on our island was 
a ship; and a still nicer touch — since the 
commercial supremacy of our city was 
assured at the outset by its combined 
command of salt-water and of fresh-water 
navigation — in the farther fact that that 
ship was large enough to venture out 
upon the ocean, and yet was small enough 
to work her way far into the interior of 
the continent: up the channels of the 
thirteen rivers which fall into, or which 
have their outlet through, New York Bay. 
And, also, I like to fancy that the spirit 
of prophecy was upon the Dutch builders 
ii 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

of that heroically great little vessel when 
they named her the Onrust: because, as- 
suredly, the word " Restless " — in its sense 
of untiring energy — at once describes the 
most essential characteristic of, and is 
the most fit motto for, the city of New 
York. Indeed, I wish that this early 
venture in ship-building had been remem- 
bered when our civic arms were granted 
to us; and that then — instead of our 
beaver and of our later-added wind-mill 
sails and flour-barrels, full of meaning 
though those charges are — we had been 
given a ship for our device, and with it 
for our motto the pregnant word: "On- 
rust." 

Our little first ship — built almost in 
the glowing moment of the city's found- 
ing — was a child of disaster; but all the 
more for that reason, I think, was the 
making of her heroic. Following quickly 
12 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

in the wake of the little nameless mer- 
chantman, other ships were sent to the 
river Mauritius — as they were beginning 
to call it in honor of their Stadtholder — to 
win a share of the profits in the newly- 
opened trade. From Amsterdam were 
sent the Fortune, commanded by Hen- 
drick Christiansen, and the Tiger, com- 
manded by Adrien Block; and another 
ship, also called the Fortune, commanded 
by Cornelis Jacobsen, was sent out from 
Hoorn. By the year 1613 half a dozen 
voyages had been made ; and by that time, 
also, there was some sort of a little trad- 
ing-post here: a group of huts, possibly 
stockaded, which stood where the Fort 
stood later and where the irrational walls 
of the new custom-house are rising now. 
The disaster to which the building of 
the Onrust was due was the burning of 
Block's ship, the Tiger, just as he was 
*3 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

making ready to return in her to Holland 
— in the autumn of the year 1613. Had 
Block and his men been of a ruminative 
habit — the habit that Irving has ascribed 
to the Dutch generally — they would have 
meditated the winter through, with their 
hands in their pockets, upon the disaster 
that had overtaken them. What they 
actually did was to set to work instantly 
to build another vessel. Presumably they 
saved from the burned Tiger what little 
iron - work they needed (ships in those 
days were pegged together with wooden 
pins, which fact accounts for their com- 
ing apart so easily and leaking so pro- 
digiously), and for ship-timber there was 
not need to go farther up town — as we 
should say nowadays — than Rector 
Street; very likely there was not need 
to go so far. And so they buckled down 
to their work, and by the spring-time of 
14 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

the year 1614 the Onrust was finished 
and launched : a yacht, as she was classed, 
of forty-four feet six inches keel; eleven 
feet six inches beam ; and of ' ' about eight 
lasts burthen " — that is to say, of about 
sixteen tons. The Dutch are not a de- 
monstrative race — but I fancy that there 
was cheering on this island on the day 
that the Onrust slid down the ways! 

There is good ground for believing that 
the ship-yard in which Block and his men 
worked was close by the present meeting 
place of Pearl and Broad streets, on the 
bank of the creek that then flowed where 
Broad Street now is. It is my very ear- 
nest hope that a monument may be set 
up there to commemorate that great 
building of our little first ship: the an- 
cestor of all the ships which have been 
built on this island in the now nearly com- 
pleted three centuries since she took the 
15 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

water ; the ancestor of all the ships which 
will be built on this island in all the cen- 
turies to come. And I am the more eager 
to see my monument erected because at 
this very time precisely the site for it 
is being prepared. The purchase of 
Fraunces's Tavern, for permanent pres- 
ervation, includes the purchase of a half- 
block of land at Pearl and Broad streets 
— whence the modern houses are to be re- 
moved, that in their place may be laid out 
a little park. Possibly the Onrust was 
built on the very piece of land thus to be 
vacated; almost certainly she was built 
not a stone's cast from its borders. In 
that park, therefore, the monument to 
New York's first ship must stand. 

As the direct result of the building of 

the Onrust the Dutch field of American 

discovery and possession materially was 

enlarged. Block sailed away in her, in the 

16 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

sunshine of that long-past spring-time, to 
explore the bays and rivers to the east- 
ward — " into which the larger ships of the 
Dutch traders had not ventured." He 
laid his course boldly through Hell Gate 
— it is probable that the Onrust was the 
first sailing vessel to make that perilous 
passage — and, going onward through 
Long Island Sound, crossed Narragansett 
Bay and Buzzard's Bay, coasted Cape Cod, 
and made his highest northing in "Pye 
Bay, as it is called by some of our navi- 
gators, in latitude 42 30', to which the 
limits of New Netherland extend." As 
he returned southward he fell in with the 
Fortune, homeward bound from Man- 
hattan, and went back in her to Holland 
to report upon the new countries which 
he had found — leaving the Onrust to make 
farther voyages of discovery under the 
command of Cornelis Hendricksen. 
17 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

Block's claim that Pye Bay (in mercy 
to summer residents upon the North 
Shore of Massachusetts, we call it Nahant 
Bay now) marked the limits of New 
Netherland to the northward was one of 
those liberal assertions common to the 
explorers of his day. That claim clashed 
with claims under English grants, and 
while it was asserted it was not maintain- 
ed. But the Dutch did claim resolutely, 
in their subsequent wranglings with the 
English, as far north as the Fresh Water 
— that is to say, the Connecticut river : on 
the ground that Block was the first Euro- 
pean to enter that river, and that the 
Dutch planted the first European colony 
upon its banks. On like grounds they 
claimed, and for a long while held with- 
out dispute, the whole of Long Island. 
Broadly speaking, therefore, the building 
of the Onrust and the voyages made in 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

her resulted in bringing within the Dutch 
" sphere of influence," as we should phrase 
it nowadays, both shores of Long Island 
Sound. 

The official record of what the Onrust 
accomplished, and of what came of it, was 
spread upon the minutes of the States 
General (August 18, 1616) in these words : 
" Cornelis Henricxs 8 , Skipper, appears be- 
fore the Assembly, assisted by Notary 
Carel van Geldre, on behalf of Gerrit 
Jacob Witssen, Burgomaster at Amster- 
dam, Jonas Witssen, Lambrecht van 
Tweenhuyzen, Paulus Pelgrom cum suis, 
Directors of New Netherland, extending 
from forty to five - and - forty degrees, 
situate in America between New France 
and Virginia, rendering a Report of the 
second Voyage, of the manner in which 
the aforesaid Skipper hath found and dis- 
covered a certain country, bay, and three 

19 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

rivers [the Housatonic, Connecticut, and 
Pequod, or Thames] lying between the 
thirty-eighth and fortieth degree of Lati- 
tude (as is more fully to be seen by the 
Figurative Map) in a small yacht of about 
eight Lasts, named the Onrust. Which 
little yacht they caused to be built in the 
aforesaid Country, where they employed 
the said Skipper in looking for new coun- 
tries, havens, bays, rivers etc. Request- 
ing the privilege to trade exclusively to 
the aforesaid countries for the term of 
four years, according to their High Might- 
iness 's placard issued in March 1614. It 
is resolved, before determining herein, 
that the Comparants shall be ordered to 
render and to transmit in writing the 
Report that they have made." 










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Ill 



THEIR High Mightiness's placard," 
above cited, was an epoch-making 
document. It had its origin in a joint 
resolution of the states of Holland and 
West Vriesland taken March 20, 1614, 
"on the Remonstrance of divers mer- 
chants wishing to discover new unknown 
rivers countries and places not sought for 
(nor resorted to) heretofore from these 
parts"; and it declared that "whoever 
shall resort to and discover such new 
lands and places shall alone be privileged 
to make four voyages to such lands and 
places from these countries, exclusive of 
every other person, until the aforesaid 
four voyages shall have been completed." 
21 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

To make the resolution effective, it was 
sent up to be confirmed by the Assembly 
of the United Provinces at The Hague; 
and there, evidently, it had strong back- 
ers who were in a hurry. Their High 
Mightinesses were not given to acting pre- 
cipitately. Quite the contrary. But on 
that occasion — as the result, we reason- 
ably may assume, of very lively lobbying 
on the part of a delegation sent to The 
Hague from Amsterdam — the resolution 
of the states of Holland and West Vries- 
land was " railroaded " at such a rate that 
in a single week the Assembly had em- 
bodied it (March 27th) in a placard, or 
proclamation, which gave it the author- 
ity of a national law. As the making of 
Manhattan was the outcome of the local 
resolution and of the general proclama- 
tion which gave it effective force, a pleas- 
ing parallel may be drawn between this 
22 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

piece of brisk legislation and other pieces 
of brisk legislation in later times ; indeed, 
it is not too much to assert that the prec- 
edent then was established of sending 
lobbying delegations from New York to 
Albany — and I see no reason for doubt- 
ing that The Hague lobby was run then 
very much as the Albany lobby is run 
now. Customs and clothes change from 
one century to another; but it is well to 
remember (Borbonius and his omnia mu- 
tantur to the contrary notwithstanding) 
that the men inside of the customs and 
the clothes do not change much from age 
to age. 

Without going deeper into this matter 
of ethics, it suffices here to state that the 
placard issued by the States General gave 
the Amsterdam ring what it wanted — 
but with a commendably greater dignity 
of expression than usually is found in the 

2 3 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

legislative acts affecting " cities of the first 
class " which issue from Albany to-day. 
The charging points of that famous pla- 
card are as follows: "Whereas, we un- 
derstand that it would be honourable ser- 
viceable and profitable to this Country, 
and for the promotion of its prosperity, 
as well as for the maintenance of sea- 
faring people, that the good Inhabitants 
should be excited and encouraged to em- 
ploy and to occupy themselves in seeking 
out and discovering Passages, Havens, 
Countries, and Places that have not be- 
fore now been discovered nor frequented ; 
and being informed by some Traders that 
they intend, with God's merciful help, 
by diligence labour danger and expense, 
to employ themselves thereat, as they 
expect to derive a handsome profit there- 
from, if it pleased Us to privilege charter 
and favour them that they alone might 
24 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

resort and sail to and frequent the pas- 
sages havens countries and places to be 
by them newly found and discovered for 
six voyages, as a compensation for their 
outlays trouble and risk. . . . Therefore: 
We, having duly weighed the aforesaid 
matter, and finding, as hereinbefore 
stated, the said undertaking to be laud- 
able honourable and serviceable for the 
prosperity of the United Provinces, and 
wishing that the experiment be free and 
open to all and every of the inhabitants 
of this country ... do hereby grant and 
consent that whosoever from now hence- 
forward shall discover any new Passages 
Havens Countries or Places shall alone 
resort to the same or cause them to be 
frequented for four voyages, without any 
other person directly or indirectly sailing 
frequenting or resorting from the United 
Netherlands to the said newly discovered 
2 5 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

and found passages havens countries or 
places until the first discoverer and find- 
er shall have made, or caused to be made, 
the said four voyages: on pain of confis- 
cation of the goods and ships wherewith 
the contrary attempt shall be made, and 
a fine of Fifty thousand Netherland Duc- 
ats, to the profit of the aforesaid finder 
or discoverer." 

It would seem from the foregoing that 
the Amsterdam men asked for six voyages 
and were granted four : even as at Albany 
" a strike " nowadays is so made that the 
Assembly may manifest a fine faithful- 
ness to the public interests by cutting 
it down handsomely — and still give the 
"strikers" all they want. Again I may 
observe that in this energetic piece of 
legislation — obviously rushed through 
that older Assembly by powerful private 
interest — there is no very pointed mani- 
26 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

festation of the Dutch sleepiness upon 
which Irving so freely descants. 

Indeed, as I have already stated, and 
as I shall state more at length presently, 
the Dutch showed a most lively eagerness 
during the years immediately following 
Hudson's discovery to seize upon and 
to develop the North American trade. 
Broadly, they sought to capture that 
trade before it fell into the hands of 
other nations. Narrowly, they sought to 
wrest it from one another — as may be 
seen in the fierce contention for trading 
privileges which went on among them- 
selves. Petitions and counter -petitions 
for trading rights pestered the local as- 
semblies of the states and the States 
General. One large company was formed 
to take, and for a time did take, the 
whole of the American contract. There 
was a constant wrangling that disturbed 
27 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

the land. Partly to quiet that wrangling, 
but more to serve high national interests, 
measures at last were taken which put an 
end to all rivalries (other than with out- 
siders) by creating a single powerful cor- 
poration to which was granted all trad- 
ing right to America. 



IV 



VERY great principles of religion and 
of state, along with other principles 
of a strictly commonplace selfish sort, lay 
at the root of the founding of the Dutch 
West India Company. In a grand way, 
that Company was intended to win free- 
dom for the Netherlands by smashing the 
power of Spain. In a less grand way — - 
but in a way that never was lost sight of 
— it was intended to line the pockets of 
the practical patriots who were its stock- 
holders. On its larger lines, as an in- 
strument of justice, and incidentally as an 
instrument of personal and political re- 
venge, it was to a great extent a success. 
On its smaller lines, as a commercial in- 
29 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

vestment, it was a ruinous failure. We 
of New York are none the better for its 
success, and we distinctly are the worse 
for its failure. That failure gave this city 
a bad start. 

William Usselincx, the originator of the 
Company, and for thirty years its most 
persistent promoter, was one of the half 
million or so of Protestant Belgians who 
were driven to take refuge in Holland 
by Spanish persecution. As an Antwerp 
merchant, under Spanish rule, he had 
traded to America; and so had come to 
know that the colonies whence Spain 
drew her main revenues were at once her 
strength and her weakness. He realized 
that those colonies, widely scattered and 
individually ill-defended, were secure only 
because they were not attacked; and he 
farther realized that even a small naval 
force, resolutely handled, could give a 
3° 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

good account of the treasure-fleets which 
sailed annually from America to Spain. 
His simple plan, developed from those 
conditions, was to seize and to sack the 
richer cities of the Spanish islands and the 
Spanish main, and to capture such plate- 
ships as could be caught conveniently 
upon the sea — with the immediate result 
of a very satisfactory return in cash from 
his sackings and capturings, and with an 
ultimate result of a greater and more far- 
reaching sort. On that larger side was 
patriotism. His great purpose was to 
cripple Spain by seizing her revenues at 
their source, and still farther to cripple 
her by breaking her line of communica- 
tion with that source : both by the actual 
capture of her treasure-laden ships, and 
by the threat of capture that would make 
Spanish ship-masters fearful of their voy- 
age. The threat was a potent one. In 
3 1 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YOR1C 

our own day, when the Alabama was 
afloat, we have seen what such a threat, 
backed by only a ship or two, will do to 
wreck the commerce of a nation by driv- 
ing its vessels to the shelter of foreign 
flags. In those large days of hard fight- 
ing refuge under a foreign flag was a 
thing unknown. Spain had no choice but 
to stand up and take Dutch punishment 
until — and that was intended to be the 
glorious ending of the struggle — she 
should be so weakened that her hold 
upon the Netherlands could be broken 
for good and all. 

It was about the year 1592 that Ussel- 
incx broached his heroic project for or- 
ganizing that private military corporation 
which anticipated by almost precisely 
three centuries Mr. Stockton's " Great 
War Syndicate": an association of finan- 
ciers who, in a strictly business way, were 
32 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

to expel the Spaniards from the Nether- 
lands — and who were to net upon the 
transaction a profit of from fifty to one 
hundred per cent. Also, it was on busi- 
ness lines that his project was opposed — 
but with a mingling in the opposition of 
considerations of classes and of creeds. 
The destruction by the Spaniards of the 
commerce of Antwerp had thrown a large 
part of that commerce to Rotterdam and 
Amsterdam. It was asking a good deal, 
therefore, to ask the Dutch to take a 
hand in a venture that would bring them 
to grips with the strongest State in the 
world; and that would have for its out- 
come, if successful, the return of the 
Belgian refugees in triumph to their own 
country to re-establish — at the cost of 
their Dutch allies — their lost trade on the 
Scheldt. John of Barneveldt, as a states- 
man — perhaps as a somewhat narrow- 
3 33 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

minded statesman — opposed the Belgian 
plan. Behind him were the town aris- 
tocracies of birth and of wealth, the 
advocates of republicanism, the Armin- 
ians. The Belgians had for allies the 
lower classes in the towns of Holland, the 
monarchists, the strict Calvinists, and for 
a rallying centre the House of Orange — 
the head of which great House, taking a 
strictly personal interest in the matter, 
played always and only for his own hand. 
The two great parties then formed last- 
ed intact until the French Revolution, 
and are not extinct even now. For 
thirty years the fight between them — 
broadly on the Belgian matter, but with 
many side issues — was waged vigorously. 
In the first acute stage of the struggle, 
1 607-1609, the main issues were war or 
truce or peace with Spain — and the threat 
implied by Usselincx's project had much 
34 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

to do with compelling Spain to accept 
the humiliating twelve years' truce that 
was signed in the year 1609. In the 
second acute stage, 1617-1619, the main 
issue was theological: the fight for su- 
premacy between the Calvinists and the 
Arminians. That fight ended, on May 
13, 1 619, with the execution of Barne- 
veldt. Then Usselincx's plan was taken 
up in good earnest: with the result that 
things began to move forward briskly 
toward the founding of New York. 

I confess that there is a suggestion of 
anticlimax in treating as mere incidents 
of that great struggle the wrecking of 
the power of Spain and the winning of 
freedom for the United Netherlands ; and 
as its culmination nothing more stirring 
than the establishment of a fur-traders' 
camp on a lonely islet nooked in the 
waters of an almost unknown land. But 

3o 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

I protest that, for my present purposes, 
the most important result which flowed 
from the rise of the Dutch Republic pre- 
cisely was the establishment of that fur- 
traders' camp. 



V 



JUST the same human nature that still 
is in use showed itself in the fight that 
went on in the Low Countries during 
those strenuous thirty years. That much 
is made clear by the records of the states 
of Holland and of West Vriesland — where 
the Belgian party was strongest — and by 
the records of the States General. But 
the spicy personal details of the conflict, 
being hid in the phrases " divers mer- 
chants" and "divers traders," are lost. 

On June 21, 16 14, when the light 
sparring of the second round was be- 
ginning, a petition of " divers traders of 
these provinces" was presented to the 
States General praying for power to form 
37 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

" a general Company for the West Indies, 
the coast of Africa, and through the 
Straits of Magellan." The petition was 
ordered to lie over for four weeks, to the 
end that " their High Mightinesses may 
thoroughly examine the matter"; but its 
opponents — by means which were not re- 
corded in the minutes — managed to keep 
it in committee for more than two months. 
It did come up again, however, on the 
25th of August; and so vigorously that 
the Assembly voted "that the business 
of forming a general West India Com- 
pany shall be undertaken to-morrow 
morning." Again the opposition got in 
some fine work — and the business was not 
undertaken on that " to-morrow morn- 
ing" of nearly three hundred years ago. 
It was adjourned until September 2d. On 
that day the two parties came to a clinch 
— that ended for the Belgian party in a 
38 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

clean fall. During the morning the Bel- 
gians clearly had the lead, and the As- 
sembly resolved " that the affair of the 
West India Company shall be continued 
this afternoon." But it wasn't — and be- 
fore the West India Company was found- 
ed that momentary stoppage had stretch- 
ed out into nine years. Very interesting 
would be the record — if it existed, and 
if we could get at it — of what happened 
that day at The Hague after the morning 
session of the Assembly stood adjourned! 
Having no record to go by, we can only 
make guesses : being guided a little in our 
guessing by knowledge of what has hap- 
pened at Albany, between two sessions 
of another Assembly, in later times. 

A little light is thrown on the situation 
by an act passed (September 27, 16 14) by 
the states of Holland and West Vries- 
land: in which is the pointed suggestion 

39 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

that under cover of a general company 
"some may secretly endeavor to pursue 
trade to Guinea ... in case the trade 
to other countries should . . . happen to 
fail, to be interrupted, or to cease." 
Possibly, then, the Dutch slave - traders 
had a hand in " knifing " the bill that day. 
Some measures in our own Congress were 
"knifed" by the slave-holding interest 
much less than three centuries ago. Also, 
it is fair to assume that the promoters of 
the New Netherland Company had much 
to do with the " knifing." Certainly, that 
Company was chartered only a little more 
than a month after the West India Com- 
pany went by the board. 

Among the members of the New 
Netherland Company were Hans Hongers, 
Paulus Pelgrom, and Lambrecht van 
Tweenhuysen, owners of the ships Tiger 
and Fortune — and therefore the owners 
40 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

of the yacht Onrust: and the major claim 
on which they rested their request for 
special trading privileges was their right 
to benefit from the discoveries that had 
resulted from the little yacht's voyage. 
To that Company the States General 
granted a charter (October n, 1614) 
which gave an exclusive right ' ' to resort 
to, or cause to be frequented, the afore- 
said newly discovered countries situate 
in America between New France and Vir- 
ginia, the sea coasts whereof lie in the 
Latitude of from forty to forty five de- 
grees, now named New Netherland, as is 
to be seen by a Figurative Map hereunto 
annexed ; and that for four Voyages with- 
in the term of three years, commencing 
the first January 161 5 next coming, or 
sooner. ' ' 

In that document the name " New 
Netherland" first was used officially; and 
41 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

was used, to quote Mr. Brodhead, to 
designate the "unoccupied regions of 
America lying between Virginia and Can- 
ada by a name which they continued to 
bear for half a century — until, in the full- 
ness of time, right gave way to power 
and the Dutch colony of New Netherland 
became the English province of New 
York." 

The question of title that Mr. Brodhead 
raises in this loose statement of fact is far 
too large a question to be dealt with here. 
But it is only fair to add that his hot con- 
tention that the Dutch had a just right to 
their North American holding is denied 
with equal heat by a Dutch authority. 
The peppery Dr. Asher — in his life of 
Hudson, prepared for the Hakluyt Society 
— disposes of the claims of his own coun- 
trymen in these words: "The [Dutch] 
title itself was little better than a shadow. 
42 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

It was entirely founded on the boldest, 
the most obstinate, and the most ex- 
tensive act of 'squatting' recorded in 
colonial history. The territory called 
New Netherland, which the West India 
Company claimed on account of Hudson's 
discovery, belonged by the best possible 
right to England. It formed part of a 
vast tract of country, the coast of which 
had been first discovered by English 
ships, on which settlements had been 
formed by English colonists, and which 
had been publicly claimed by England, 
and granted to an English company be- 
fore Hudson ever set foot on American 
ground. But the wilds and wastes of 
primeval forests were thought of so little 
value that the Dutch were for many years 
allowed to encroach upon English rights, 
without more than passing remonstrance 
of the British government." 
43 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

It is my duty to state the clashing 
opinions of these two fiery historians ; but 
I have not the effrontery to discuss the 
question on which, so signally, they are 
at odds. Nor is discussion necessary. 
Most happily, that once burning question 
was quieted by the Treaty of Breda 
(1667) and has been a dead issue for 
more than two hundred years. 

In the end, as I have written, Usselincx 
and the Belgians won through. When 
John of Barne veldt's head ceased to be 
associated with his body — the equities of 
that detachment need not here be dis- 
cussed — opposition to the founding of the 
West India Company came to an end. 
The actual establishment of the Com- 
pany had to be postponed until the ex- 
piration of the truce with Spain; but 
matters immediately were set in train 
for it, and in the year 1621, upon the 
44 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

renewal of hostilities, the act of incor- 
poration (June 3d) was passed. 

Under the terms of the charter — which, 
as Mr. Brodhead puts it, " created a sort 
of marine principality with sovereign 
rights on foreign shores " — the Company 
was granted exclusive rights to trade on 
the coasts of Africa between the Tropic 
of Cancer and the Cape of Good Hope; 
to the West Indies; and to the coast of 
America between New Foundland and 
the Straits of Magellan: with power to 
make treaties, to found colonies within 
those limits, to appoint governors over 
such colonies, to administer justice in 
them, and to raise a military force for 
their defence. Farther, the States Gen- 
eral engaged to defend the Company 
against every person in free navigation 
and traffic; to " assist " it with a grant of 
a million guilders; and to give it sixteen 

45 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

warships — that the Company was to man 
and to equip, and to match by raising an 
equal naval force of its own: the whole 
fleet to be under the command of an 
admiral whom the States General should 
name. Also, the States General reserved 
the right to confirm or to reject the 
governors nominated by the Company, 
and to exercise a general control of its 
affairs. 

Thus, at last, the Dutch West India 
Company was launched. Had Irving 
touched upon its history he probably 
would have attributed the long delay to 
Dutch sleepiness; and would have given 
us many neatly-turned pleasantries about 
the number of pipes smoked drowsily, 
and about the drowsy talk that went on 
for thirty years between those stolid 
Dutch statesmen and those stolid Dutch 
financiers — all of which would have been 
46 



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THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

vastly amusing, but would have left some- 
thing on the side of fact to be desired. 

There was substantial cause for that 
long delay. In addition to the great 
problems of statecraft that had to be 
dealt with, the Dutch were dealing with 
a new great project on new great lines. 
Their nearest approach to a precedent 
was the East India Company: of which 
the primary purpose — as trade went and 
as peace was understood in those days — 
was peaceful trade. The primary pur- 
pose of the West India Company was 
war. Its main dividends were expected 
to come from, and eventually did come 
from, the capture of Spanish treasure. 
But provision had to be made for earn- 
ing money in between whiles — during the 
close season for treasure -hunting — by 
employing its armed fleet in ordinary 
trade: in carrying cargoes of slaves and 
47 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

peltries and other general merchandise 
of the times. And at every turn con- 
flicting interests, political and commer- 
cial, had to be reconciled and brought 
into line. Nowadays a half-dozen cor- 
poration lawyers would get together and 
would organize such a company in a fort- 
night; and in another fortnight — under 
the New Jersey general corporation act 
— it would have its charter and would be 
established as a going concern. But we 
do these things quickly now — being also 
freed from the trammels of state policy 
— because we have precedents in abun- 
dance to work by, and because we have 
the tools to work with (I use the phrase 
with a broad impersonality) lying ready 
to our hands. To take a strictly legal 
parallel: any little seventeenth-century 
English conveyancer was able to get the 
weather-gauge of the Statute of Uses after 
48 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

Orlando Bridgman had shown him how. 
Yet sleepiness — whatever may be said of 
its slowness — never has been suggested 
as a distinguishing characteristic of the 
seventeenth - century English bar. Nor 
were the Dutch of that century sleepy. 
They were very wide awake indeed. 

One other point in the making of the 
West India Company I must touch upon. 
With the sincere immodesty that is not 
the least marked of our civic traits, we 
of New York are accustomed to believe 
that that Company was organized and 
chartered mainly for the purpose of ex- 
ploiting our own New Netherland. Act- 
ually, the part that our little island (and 
its dependent continent) had in that large 
piece of statecraft was microscopic: as 
we realize when we consider the great 
elements — rival trade interests, contend- 
ing factions, warring creeds — which were 

4 4 9 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

combined in it under the strangely blend- 
ed pressure of sordid selfishness and lofty 
patriotism and hot revenge. Looked at 
in that way, there is nothing in the his- 
tory of the Company to stir our vanity. 
But looked at in another way, even our 
vanity has its consolations. Although the 
splendid part that the Company took in 
fighting to a glorious finish the glorious 
fight that Holland put up with Spain is 
not forgotten, its share of honor in a way 
is lost: being merged into, and almost 
indistinguishably blended with, the na- 
tional honor which the Dutch won by a 
victory that instantly benefited, and that 
still continues to benefit, the whole civ- 
ilized world. But the Company shared 
with no one the glory of planting the city 
of New Amsterdam, that in time's fulness 
was to be the city of New York — nor had 
it, I venture incidentally to assert, the 
5o 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

least notion that out of that trifling 
colonial venture any glory ever would 
come. Yet that most minor of all its 
accomplishments is precisely the accom- 
plishment that has kept green its mem- 
ory; that will continue to keep green its 
memory as long as New York endures. 

I hasten to add that we owe the Com- 
pany no thanks. What it did for the 
making of our city was done badly — and 
the very founding of it was barely more 
than a mere by - blow of chance. In 
point of fact, the nearest approach to 
naming New Netherland in the Com- 
pany's charter was the permissive clause 
referring to the colonization of "fruitful 
and unsettled lands." At least, the de- 
scription is recognizable. While Man- 
hattan no longer is unsettled, it certainly 
is fruitful still. 

5i 



VI 



EVEN before the West India Com- 
pany was organized the germ of the 
destruction of Dutch rule in North Amer- 
ica had taken form. In November 1620 
the patent had passed the Great Seal by 
which King James granted to the Plym- 
outh Company "an absolute property 
in all the American territory extending 
from the fortieth to the forty-eighth de- 
gree of latitude and from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific." That large-handed grant 
was qualified, to be sure, by the proviso 
that colonies might not be planted in any 
region "actually possessed or inhabited 
by any other Christian prince or state"; 
but as England refused to acknowledge 
52 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

that the Dutch had any possessions be- 
tween the Virginia and the New England 
plantations, and as the English ambas- 
sador in Holland, Sir Dudley Carleton, 
lodged (February 9, 1622) a formal pro- 
test against the planting of the New 
Netherland colony, that proviso was no 
more than a politely turned phrase. On 
the other hand, the States General paid 
very little attention to the protest, and 
never formally replied to it. However, 
there it was on the record ; and so was in 
readiness for use. But England went 
slowly in those days. Almost half a cen- 
tury passed before it was used. Mr. 
Chamberlain and Sir Alfred Milner were 
quicker in getting from cause to conse- 
quence a couple of years or so ago. 

While the ambassadors talked — or 
maintained a discreet but aggravating 
silence — the merchants acted. In the 
53 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

years while the West India Company was 
in course of formation the foundation of 
the sea-wealth of New York was laid. 
The Dutch planted their trading-post on 
the island of Manhattan because the 
many water-ways which came together 
there obviously made it a good place for 
trade with the interior of the country. 
As exploration continued, the fact was 
demonstrated that it not only was a good 
place but that it absolutely was the best 
place for trade on the coast of North 
America: that there was no other such 
great land-locked harbor, which at once 
was near to the sea, easily open to it, and 
free from the dangers of outlying reefs 
and shoals ; that nowhere else — and this 
fact continued to count first with us un- 
til the time of railroads — was there any 
such system of interior water-ways as 
that which made the Sandy Hook Chan- 
54 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

nel the inlet to the trade of a vast part, 
and a vastly rich part, of the continent. 
Therefore the Dutch shallops went and 
came on our thirteen rivers — and beyond 
the shallop service, plying in the upper 
reaches of those rivers and in countless 
minor streams, was a still farther-reach- 
ing service of canoes. And all of that 
trade ebbed from and flowed to this island 
of Manhattan: where the round-bellied 
Dutch ships linked it with and made it a 
part of the commerce of the world. Even 
a minor prophet, with those geographical 
facts in his possession, would not have 
hesitated to prophesy a great future for 
such a seaport with such a hold upon the 
land. 

When the West India Company came 

into existence it therefore had among its 

assets — although ignored in its chartered 

list of assets — a little trading-post that 

55 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

was in the way of promotion to be the 
capital of a flourishing colony, had there 
been manifested even a very small 
amount of common sense and common 
justice in the management of its affairs. 
And at the beginning — being stimulated 
to wise action, perhaps, by the English 
assertion of a counter claim to their 
American possessions — the Company did 
go at the planting of New Netherland 
with a certain show of energy, and on 
lines of broader policy than were called 
for by the mere requirements of trade. 

Upon the completion of the Com- 
pany's organization the management of 
the affairs of New Netherland were con- 
fided by the Directorate, the Council of 
XIX., to the Chamber of Amsterdam — 
whence came the name that was given to 
the settlement on Manhattan Island — 
and by that Chamber the first ship-load 
56 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

of colonists, thirty families, was despatch- 
ed from the Texel in the ship New Nether- 
land in March 1623. Making their course 
to the westward by a long reach into the 
south — as was the habit of the Dutch 
navigators, who ever were fearful of North 
Atlantic storms — they touched at the 
Canaries and at Guiana, and then beat 
up the coast to Sandy Hook and made 
their harbor early in May. (Possibly our 
otherwise unaccounted-for custom of May- 
day movings had its origin in their arrival 
about May-day, and the consequent run- 
ning of their yearly tenures from that 
date.) They were of good stuff, those 
colonists — mostly Walloons, very eager 
to get away from European religious, in- 
tolerance for good and all. Their coming 
marks the real founding of New York. 
They were the first Europeans who came 
to dwell upon this island with the inten- 
57 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

tion of spending their lives here; and, in 
the end — though that part of their inten- 
tion was understood rather than stated — 
of making themselves permanently a part 
of it by being buried in its soil. 

Meantime, by way of fortifying the 
situation politically, the States General 
erected into a Province the West India 
Company's comet - like holding — which 
had a tiny material head upon the sea- 
board, and a vast vaporous tail that ex- 
tended vaguely across the continent west- 
ward — and gave it, as a Province, the 
heraldic rank and bearings of a Count. 

Then it was that our beloved Beaver 
came to us : the same worthy animal who 
still figures gallantly in the arms of the 
city of New York. As we first received 
him, he was the single charge — " a bea- 
ver proper" — upon our shield, above 
which a count's coronet was our crest. 
58 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

Later, when new civic arms were granted 
to us by the English Crown — in the time 
of great commercial prosperity that fol- 
lowed upon the passage of the Bolting Act 
— he modestly joined the wind-mill sails 
and the flour - barrels, and so became a 
mere beaver " in chief and in base." And 
there he remains to this day: in lasting 
memorial of the fact that the foundation 
of the sea- wealth of this city was laid in 
its trade in furs. 



VII 

AT the outset, the venture undertaken 
L by the West India Company was a 
profitable one: not on the side of trade, 
but on the side of war. Three great 
successes marked the first ten years of 
the Company's existence: the taking of 
Bahia (1624), the capture of the treas- 
ure fleet (1628), and the reduction of 
Pernambuco (1630). Of those three 
events, although the Brazilian conquests 
counted for more in the long run, the 
capture of the plate-ships naturally made 
the strongest impression upon the popular 
mind. Indeed, that magnificent cash re- 
turn upon invested patriotism is talked 
about relishingly in Holland even until 
60 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

this present day. And it is not sur- 
prising. Never has there been such a 
bag of treasure in modern times! Ad- 
miral Peter Heyn, leaving out of the 
account the vessels which he sunk with 
their treasure in them, brought home to 
Holland seventeen galleons laden with 
bullion and merchandise valued, accord- 
ing to Dr. Asher, at more than fourteen— 
or, according to the more conservative 
Mr. Brodhead, at more than twelve mill- 
ions of guilders; and the Dutch guilder 
of that period, it must be remembered, 
had a purchasing value not much less 
than that of our dollar of to-day. Ei- 
ther estimate is prodigious — and on the 
strength of those huge winnings the Com- 
pany declared upon its paid-up capital a 
dividend variously estimated by the same 
authorities at fifty and at seventy-five 
per cent. Neither the Standard Oil Com- 
61 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

pany nor the Steel Trust as yet has 
equalled that! 

But it was not a wholesome sort of 
money - making. " Successful war thus 
poured infatuating wealth into the treas- 
ury of the West India Company," is the 
view that Mr. Brodhead takes of it; and 
he adds that when, in the ensuing year, 
the King of Spain made overtures to re- 
new the truce " the pride, the avarice, 
and the religious sentiment of Holland 
were united in continuing the war." 
Against the truce the Company addressed 
to the States General (November 16, 
1629) a formal remonstrance. " We have 
at present," declared the remonstrants, 
"over one hundred full-rigged ships of 
various burdens at sea . . . manned by 
fifteen thousand seamen and soldiers and 
armed with over four hundred metal 
pieces . . . and over two thousand swiv- 
62 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

els, beside pedereros to the number of 
far beyond six hundred. ' ' That fleet had 
not sailed the seas, nor was it intended 
to sail the seas, for mere amusement — as 
the remonstrants implied by adding that 
"during some consecutive years" they 
had ' ' plundered the enemy and enriched 
this country ' ' by bringing into it great 
stores of indigo, sugar, hides, cochineal 
and tobacco; and, above all, by bringing 
in the captured galleons — which contain- 
ed " so great a treasure that never did any 
fleet bring to this or to any other country 
so great a prize." And they ended by 
declaring that they had exhausted the 
King of Spain's treasury by these various 
appropriations of his property, and by 
" depriving him of so much silver, which 
was as blood from one of the arteries of 
his heart." But the pith of their argu- 
ment was in their assertion — in which 

63 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

was more of truth than they suspected — 
that "the utter ruin and dissolution of 
this Company will be the result of the 
present negotiations for a truce." 

It was reasonable that the Company 
should be so hot for keeping on with the 
war. Spanish treasure-ships were to be 
had for the mere taking — and the Dutch 
found taking them very easy work in- 
deed. It is a curious fact that the 
Spaniards — who have done some very 
pretty fighting at one time and another 
on land — never were hard to whip at sea. 
From the Armada down to Santiago their 
naval record is a shabby one. We ham- 
mered them pretty much as we pleased 
in the nineteenth century; so did the 
English in the eighteenth; so did the 
Dutch in the seventeenth — the time that 
I here am dealing with; and so, I believe 
thoroughly, would the English have ham- 
64 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

mered the whole Armada in the sixteenth 
had they not sublet a part of their con- 
tract to the winds and the waves. 

The battlings of the Dutch and the 
Spaniards have a distinct place in our 
commercial annals, because one of their 
direct results was to check our com- 
mercial growth at the start. The "in- 
fatuating wealth" that poured in upon 
the West India Company tended to make 
it careless of the little colony of New 
Netherland, and also to make it resentful 
of the small return which that colony 
yielded upon the relatively large outlay 
required to keep it in running order: and 
so led to the adoption of the " squeezing " 
policy which handicapped the trade of 
the colonists and in the end destroyed 
their loyalty and made them welcome the 
change to English rule. Mr. Brodhead 
is within the mark in his observation: 

5 65 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

" It was an evil day for New Netherland 
when the States General committed to 
the guardianship of a close and grasp- 
ing mercenary corporation the ultimate 
fortunes of their embryo province in 
America." 

In a report presented to the States 
General (October 23, 1629) the feeling of 
the Company in regard to its colony is 
made plain. "The people conveyed by 
us thither have . . . found but scanty 
means of livelihood up to the present 
time ; and have not been any profit, but a 
drawback, to this Company. The trade 
carried on there in peltries is right ad- 
vantageous; but, one year with another, 
we can at most bring home fifty thousand 
guilders." 

Yet with that return, at that time, the 
Company should have been well satis- 
fied. In The Planter's Plea, published in 
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THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

London in the year 1630, the English 
author wrote that the colonists of New 
Netherland " appeared to subsist in a 
comfortable manner, and to promise fair- 
ly both to the State and to the under- 
takers." The trouble was that "the 
undertakers " wanted too much and 
wanted it too soon. In the year 1629 
the population of the colony could not 
have exceeded three hundred and fifty 
souls ; and three hundred and fifty people 
very well might "subsist in comfort" on 
an export trade of fifty thousand guild- 
ers a year. The Company in short, then 
and always, was greedy. By holding New 
Netherland as an investment rather than 
as a trust, by laying heavy imposts upon 
commerce in order to raise dividends, it 
throttled the trade that a less selfish 
policy would have left free to expand. 
The one sort of private ownership in 
67 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

the colony that was encouraged — by the 
granting of little principalities to pa- 
troons, who were free within certain lim- 
itations to trade on their own account 
— told directly against the welfare of the 
mass of the colonists by creating unfair 
distinctions of class. It was a trans- 
planting of feudalism to America — and 
feudalism did not thrive in American 
soil. Actually, the patroonships were 
bagged by an inside ring of the Com- 
pany's directors — the practical value of 
being on the ground floor was understood 
in those days quite as well as we under- 
stand it now — and the outcome of that 
intrinsically bad policy bred evil in two 
ways. It created dissension in the man- 
agement of the Company's affairs at 
home by arraying inside private inter- 
ests against the common interests of the 
shareholders at large; and in the colony 
68 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

the same private interests were arrayed 
against the common interests of the less- 
favored colonists. Later, the supply of 
arms which the savages obtained from 
the patroon trading - posts — but by no 
means only from those sources: trading 
guns for peltries was so profitable an 
illegal transaction that everybody was 
keen to have a hand in it — led on direct- 
ly to the horrors of the Indian wars. 



VIII 

IN a word, atrociously bad government 
was the rule almost from the beginning 
until quite the end of the Dutch domina- 
tion of New Netherland. Execrable ad- 
ministration in Holland led to execrable 
executive management in the colony. 
Excepting May (1624) and Verhulst 
(1625), who were little more than factors, 
the men sent out as governors (the of- 
ficial title was Director General) wretch- 
edly neglected or absolutely betrayed the 
interests which they were sworn to serve. 
Kieft (1 638-1 646) was an easy first in 
that bad lot. He was an ex-bankrupt, 
whose bankruptcy had been of such sort 
that his portrait had been hung up on the 
70 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

town gallows. Against him, unrefuted, 
stood the pleasing charge of having em- 
bezzled ransom -money intrusted to him 
to rescue Christian captives held by the 
Turks. His evil work in New Nether- 
land culminated in his provocation — by 
<a horrid and utterly inexcusable massa- 
cre of savages — of the terrible Indian 
war of 1643: which brought the colony 
to the very verge of ruin, and which 
aroused so violent an outcry against him 
on the part of the colonists that he was 
recalled. In a way, justice was served 
out to him: he went down, his sins with 
him, in the wreck of the ship in which he 
took passage for home. But while Kieft 
holds the record for worse than inca- 
pacity, protests were made by the 
colonists against the doings of every one 
of the Directors — and always for cause. 
Each of them played first for his own 
7i 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

hand. After caring for himself, his care 
was for what remained of the interests 
of the Company — and those he either 
muddled or marred. Caring for the in- 
terests of the colonists, in every case, was 
the last consideration of all. Under those 
conditions, of necessity, discontent was 
chronic among the inhabitants of the 
Province from first to last. 

On the other hand, I am persuaded 
that an archangel would have had his 
work cut out for him had he tried to 
govern at once wisely and acceptably the 
hustling, greedy, law-defying Dutchmen 
who dwelt in New Netherland two hun- 
dred and fifty years ago. By combining 
the atrocities of the Congo Free State 
under Lothair's administration (paral- 
leled here by Kieft's atrocities) with 
the corruption at Johannesberg under 
Kruger's administration (paralleled here 
72 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEYv^ YORK 

by the corruption that obtained con- 
tinuously under Dutch rule) we may get 
a fair notion of what our few respectable 
ancestors on this island had to contend 
with, and of what our many unrespect- 
able ancestors actually were. 

The saving salt of those days was 
found in the few men who stood reso- 
lutely for good government and for hon- 
est ways. They would have been called 
mugwumps, had that word then been 
available for use ; and no doubt they did 
receive some equivalent derogatory Dutch 
name. The most exemplary of that 
small but honorable company was David 
Pietersz de Vries: who strove hard to 
avert the Indian war waged by the out- 
rageous Kieft, and who stood as dis- 
tinctly for all that was good in the colony 
as Kieft stood for all that was bad. Had 
De Vries been appointed Director, in- 

73 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

stead of Kieft, we should have been 
saved from the blackest crime recorded 
in our colonial history; and had he been 
continued in office, in Stuyvesant's place, 
the colony would not have fallen into 
such disorder as to give the English a 
mere walk - over when their time for 
absorbing it came. No governor could 
have prevented that absorption. It was 
inevitable. But the community taken 
over from De Vries would have been far 
sounder morally than was that which 
was taken over from Stuyvesant; and 
therefore would have been less likely to 
degenerate into a nest of pirates and 
smugglers, as it did degenerate, during 
the first thirty years of English rule. 

Precisely what sort of government we 

had here under the governors appointed 

by the West India Company was set 

forth with a refreshing candor in the 

74 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

famous Remonstrance — and in its accom- 
panying Memorial — presented by the 
colonists to the States General in the 
year 1649. Incidentally, the tone of 
those documents — which are informed by 
the petty spitefulness of mean spirits — 
makes also an ugly case against their 
authors; and the case is all the stronger 
because it is to be read between the lines 
of their complainings and is an alto- 
gether unconscious arraignment of them- 
selves. But this fact, while it tends to 
palliate the minor charges against Stuy- 
vesant — whose high-handed ways with 
his subjects, and whose coarsely express- 
ed contempt for them " in language better 
befitting the fish-market than the Coun- 
cil board," probably were not without 
justification — does not weaken the ma- 
jor charge of misgovernment preferred 
against him and against the Company's 
75 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

representatives generally; nor does it 
lessen the reasonableness of the several 
specific requests for reforms in law and 
in administration for which the remon- 
strants prayed. 

The Remonstrance — a document that 
fills forty-four printed quarto pages — is 
a history of the planting of New Neth- 
erland, a description of the country, a 
statement of the wrongs suffered by 
the colonists, and a prayer for certain 
specified easements and reliefs. It was 
drawn up, presumably, by Adriaen van 
der Donck. It was signed by Van der 
Donck, Heermans, Hardenburg, Couwen- 
hoven, Loockermans, Kip, Van Cortlandt, 
Jansen, Hall, Elbertsen, and Bout. Three 
of the signers, Van der Donck, Couwen- 
hoven, and Bout, were delegated to take 
it to Holland and to lay it before the 
authorities at The Hague. 
76 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

"In the infancy of this country" [wrote the 
complainants] "the Directors [the Board of 
Directors of the West India Company] adopted 
wrong plans, and in our opinion looked more 
to their own profit than to the country's welfare, 
and trusted more to interested than to sound 
advice. This is evident from the unnecessary 
expenses incurred from time to time; the heavy 
accounts from New Netherland; the taking 
of colonies [land grants] by Directors; their 
carrying on commerce, to which end trade has 
been regulated, and finally from not colonizing 
the country. . . . Had the Hon ble West India 
Company attended in the beginning to popula- 
tion instead of incurring great expense for 
things unnecessary . . . which through bad 
management and calculation came wholly to 
little or nothing, notwithstanding the excessive 
expenditure . . . the place might now be of 
considerable importance. . . . 

"Trade, without which, when lawful, no coun- 
try prospers, has also fallen off so much in 
consequence of the Company's acts that it is 
without a parallel, and more slavish than free, 
owing to high duties and all the inspections and 
trouble that accompany it. We highly approve 
of inspection according to the orders given by 

77 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

the Company to its officers, and so far as 'tis 
done to check smugglers, who have ruined the 
country, and now go out from all parts; but it 
ought, nevertheless, be executed without par- 
tiality, which is not always the case. The 
duty is high ; of inspection and seizures there is 
no lack, and thus lawful trade is turned aside 
— except some little which is carried on only pro 
forma, in order to push smuggling under this 
cloak. Meanwhile the Christians are treated al- 
most like Indians in the purchase of necessaries 
which they cannot do without ; this causes great 
complaint, distress and poverty. Thus, for ex- 
ample : The merchants sell their dry goods, which 
are subject to little loss, at a hundred per cent, 
advance, and that freely, according as there is 
a demand for, or a scarcity of, this or that 
article; petty traders who bring small lots and 
others who speculate, buy up those goods from 
the merchants and sell them again to the com- 
mon people who cannot do without them, often 
at another advance of cent per cent., more or 
less, according as they are persuaded or dis- 
posed. More is taken on liquors, which are 
subject to a considerable leakage, and . . . the 
goods are disposed by the first, second, and 
third hands at an advance of one and two 

78 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

hundred and more per cent. It would be im- 
possible for us to enumerate all the practices 
that are had recourse to for the purpose of 
promoting self or individual interest; whilst 
little thought is bestowed on introducing people 
into the country. ... It also has been seen 
how the letters of the Eight Men have been 
treated, and the result; besides many additional 
orders and instructions which are not known 
to us, and are alike ruinous. But laying this 
aside for the present, with a word now and 
again by way of remark, let us proceed to 
examine how their [the Company's] servants, 
and the Directors [of New Netherland] and 
their friends, have fattened here from time to 
time, having played with their employers and 
the people as the cat plays with the mouse. 
. . . We shall pass over the beginning . . . and 
treat only of the two last sad and senseless ex- 
travagances — we should say administrations — 
of Director Kieft, which is now in truth past, 
but its evil consequences remain ; and of Director 
Stuyvesant, which still stands — if that can be 
said to stand which lies completely prostrate. 
. . . Previous to Director Kieft 's bringing the 
unnecessary war upon the country, his principal 
aim and object was to take good care of him- 

79 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

self and to leave behind him a great name, 
but without any expense either to himself or to 
the Company. . . . With that view he con- 
sidered the erection of a church very necessary. 
. . . The Director wished and insisted that it 
should be located in the Fort, where it was 
erected in spite of the others. And, truly, the 
location is as suitable as a fifth wheel to a 
coach; for, besides being small, the Fort lies 
on a point, which would be of more importance 
in case of population; the church, which ought 
to be owned by the people who defrayed the 
expense of its construction, intercepts and turns 
aside the Southeast wind from the gristmill which 
stands in that vicinity ; and this is also one of the 
causes [!] why a scarcity of bread prevails fre- 
quently in summer for want of grinding. But 
this is not the sole cause ; for the mill is neglected, 
and having been leaky most of the time, it has 
become decayed and somewhat rotten, so that 
it cannot now work with more than two arms, 
and has gone on thus for all of five years. 
But returning to the church, from which the 
gristmill has for the moment diverted us, the 
Director concluded, then, to have one built and 
on the spot which he preferred. He lacked 
money — and where was this to be got? It 

80 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

happened, about this time, that Everardus 
Bogardus, the clergyman, gave in marriage a 
daughter, by his first wife. The Director 
thought this a good time for his purpose, and set 
to work after the fourth or fifth drink; and he 
himself setting a liberal example, let the wedding 
guests sign whatever they were disposed to give 
towards the church. Each, then, with a light 
head, subscribed away at a handsome rate, one 
competing with the other; and although some 
heartily repented it when their senses came back, 
they were obliged, nevertheless, to pay — noth- 
ing could avail against it. The church, then, 
was located in the Fort, in opposition to every 
one's opinion. The honor and ownership of 
that work must be inferred from the inscription, 
which, in our opinion, is somewhat ambiguous, 
and reads thus: 'Anno 1642. Willem Kicft, 
Directeur Generael, heeft de gemeente desen 
temple doen bouwen.' But, laying that aside, 
the people nevertheless paid for the church." 

That is the tone of the Remonstrance 
throughout. In a petty spirit it dealt 
with petty grievances at a length out of 
all proportion to their importance, and 

6 81 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

left what evidently were substantial 
grievances — as the high duties and the 
manifold inspections — far from clearly 
explained. That the complainants dis- 
missed in a few lines the greatest of all the 
colonial crimes against good government 
and against humanity, Kieft's Indian war, 
was not surprising. The wreck of colo- 
nial interests which had been brought 
about by that war was well understood in 
Holland. There was no need that it 
should be explained. 



IX 



COLONIAL discontent usually is rea- 
sonable, and always is natural. It 
is reasonable, because colonies are pretty 
certain to be neglected, or remembered 
only to be harshly dealt with, by the 
home government. It is natural, be- 
cause of the qualities pretty certainly 
inherent in colonists: who for the most 
part are either untried young men of 
strong character who know little of the 
world but are eager to make their way 
in it quickly, or incapable middle-aged 
men who have failed at home yet des- 
perately hope to mend their broken 
fortunes abroad. Of the small residuum, 
the men who settle down to work and 

*3 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

who silently and steadfastly build their 
own fortunes by subduing a savage land, 
very little ever is heard. It is the " kick- 
ers " who make the noise. Here in Amer- 
ica our sympathies always have been 
on the colonial side, and our animosities 
against home governments in general al- 
ways have been strong. Perhaps, now 
that we are in the way of being (some- 
what unwillingly) a " world power " our- 
selves, with swaggering and blustering 
colonies of our own, our point of view 
may change. It even is conceivable that 
in time we may come to have quite a 
compassionating fellow - feeling for our 
once tyrant, the late King George the 
Third! 

Actually, in spite of bad laws badly 
administered, the colony of New Nether- 
land did make headway. This country 
was a rich country, and its exploitation 
84 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

— even under heavy handicaps — yielded 
a good return. In the year 1624 the 
cargo of furs sent home by Director May, 
"as a first year's remittance from New 
Netherland," sold for 28,000 guilders. 
Two years later the showing was still bet- 
ter. Under date of November 5, 1626, 
the following report was sent from Am- 
sterdam to the States General : 

"Yesterday arrived here the ship the Arms of 
Amsterdam, which sailed from New Netherland, 
out of the River Mauritius, on the 23d of Septem- 
ber. They report that our people are in good 
heart and live in peace there. The women also 
have borne some children there. They have 
bought the Island Manhattes from the Indians 
for the value of 60 guilders — 'tis 1 1 ,000 morgens 
[about 22,000 acres] in size. They had all their 
grain sowed by the middle of May, and reaped 
by the middle of August. They send thence 
samples of summer grain — such as wheat, rye, 
barley, oats, buckwheat, canary -seed, beans, 
and flax. The cargo of the aforesaid ship is: 
7246 beaver skins, 178^ otter skins, 675 otter 

85 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

skins, 48 minck skins, 36 wild cat skins, 33 
mincks, 34 rat skins. Considerable oak timber 
and hickory." 

Charles Wooley, writing half a century 
later, gives these values: "beaver skins, 
ordinary, 10 shillings; beaver skins, black, 
15 shillings; minck skins, 5 shillings; otter 
skins, ordinary, 8 shillings; otter skins, 
black, if very good, 20 shillings." Rough- 
ly estimated, and without allowance for 
the fall in the value of peltries in that 
half century, the value of the cargo of the 
Arms of Amsterdam therefore was not less 
than $25,000 — or well above $50,000, in 
the values of to-day. In another way the 
manifest of that ship is interesting. It 
is the earliest known manifest of a ship 
clearing from this port. The cargo seems 
to have been an exceptional one. In the 
year 1628 the exports hence "in two 
ships" is given at 61,000 guilders — only a 
86 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

trifle above the value of the lading of that 
single ship four years earlier — and for 
the years 1629-30 the exports were valued 
at 130,000 guilders. In the year 1632 the 
exports of furs alone were valued at 
140,000 guilders, and in the year 1635 at 
135,000 guilders. I must add, however, 
that the figures of that early time have a 
wandering way with them that places 
them anywhere but above reproach. Yet 
they show, at least, that returns of a 
respectable sort began almost imme- 
diately to come in from the colony, and 
that those returns increased from year 
to year. 

With the development of trade be- 
tween the colony and the home country 
went also the development of a trade 
that was wholly colonial. By the year 
1635 a considerable commerce was car- 
ried on between New Netherland and 

87 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

New England — of which the less impor- 
tant part was direct, and the more im- 
portant part was the carriage of tobacco 
and salt from Virginian and West Indian 
ports to Boston. The suggestive fact also 
is recorded that in the year 1637 a Dutch 
ship sailing direct from the Texel landed 
in Boston a cargo of sheep and oxen and 
Flanders mares. Naturally, the English 
did not take kindly to such commercial 
under-cutting; and all the more nat- 
urally because the Dutch stiffly refused 
to permit English traders to come upon 
their own colonial preserves. 

Touching those preserves, there was a 
sharp little clashing of rights in April 
1633, when the William, a London ship 
commanded by a renegade Dutchman, 
came into this port " to trade at Hudson's 
river" — and peremptorily was refused a 
trading license. There was a fine inter- 
88 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

change of bravadoes between Director 
Van Twiller and the William's captain. 
Flags were run up and salutes were fired, 
and there was a vast amount of vaporing 
talk on the Director's side. But at the 
end of it all the ship did go up the river 
— being the first English vessel to ascend 
the Hudson — and her captain would have 
made his trade unmolested had not De 
Vries put some stiffening into Van 
Twiller 's weak backbone. "If it had 
been my case," said De Vries, shortly 
and hotly, " I should have helped him 
from the Fort to some eight-pound iron 
beans!" "The English," he added, and 
his remark has quite a modern ring in it, 
"are of so haughty a nature that they 
think everything belongs to them"; and 
he concluded by declaring with energy: 
" I should send the ship Souther g after 
him and drive him out of the river!" And 
89 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

that was precisely what Van Twiller, be- 
ing thus brought up to the collar, then 
did. 

It was not in human nature, therefore, 
for the English quietly to permit Dutch 
ships to trade in English colonial ports 
when English ships were refused trading 
privileges in Dutch colonial ports; and, 
as a matter of fact, the profitable trade 
that was developed between New Nether- 
land and the plantations in New Eng- 
land and Virginia — while immediately 
beneficial to the Dutch — was one of the 
most active of the several causes which 
led to the wresting from the Dutch of 
their holding in North America. The 
matter is too broad in its scope to be 
dealt with fully here; yet am I loath to 
relinquish it because of the many very 
human touches in which it abounds. 

With one scrap of ancient history, 
90 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

wherein the humanity still is fresh and 
strong, I am justified in dealing: the fa- 
mous case of the ship Eendracht — driven 
by stress of weather into Plymouth in the 
year 1632, and there seized by the Eng- 
lish port authorities (I quote the Dutch 
version of the matter) " on an untrue rep- 
resentation that the Peltries were bought 
within the jurisdiction or district belong- 
ing to his majesty of Great Britain." 
Over that seizure there was a diplomatic 
squabble between Holland and England 
that went on for years — and the whole of 
it, I am persuaded, was the outcome of a 
love-affair! According to a letter sent 
by the States General to their Am- 
bassador in England, the Eendracht was 
"seized on false information of the 
Provost of said ship ... and of the 
Pilot who, in opposition to the Director 
and Skipper, being on shore got married." 

9 1 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

There is the crux of it, I am sure. But 
for that Pilot's impetuously inopportune 
determination to wed the widow (I am 
quite certain that she was a widow, be- 
cause of the eagerness of it all) he very 
probably could have taken the Eend- 
racht out of Plymouth harbor and safe 
away to sea. Being ordered, no doubt, 
to do that very thing — and the widow 
ashore waiting for him! — he and his 
friend the Provost laid the " untrue rep- 
resentation " which led on to those years 
of diplomatic blustering: but which also 
led to the detention of the ship at Plym- 
outh until he was safe wed to his bounc- 
ing bride! 

After all, what mattered it if Holland 
and England were embroiled by that 
brave Pilot's hot -hearted indiscretion? 
Every man thinks first of his own happi- 
ness; and in love-affairs — it has been so 
92 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEvV YORK 

from the world's beginning — he thinks of 
nothing else. I wish that we had the end 
of the story. Let us hope that his widow 
repaid him for his gallant defiance, for 
her sweet sake, of the orders of captains 
and directors, and that it turned out 
well — that sailor-wedding which shook 
two great states to their foundations 
nearly three centuries ago ! In all serious- 
ness, I am justified in recalling here that 
only half- told and long-forgotten idyl. It 
had its place, the love - making of that 
precipitate Pilot, among the causes which 
in time's fulness changed New Nether- 
land and New Amsterdam into the State 
and City of New York. 



X 



UNDER spur of the " remonstrances " 
— there were many of them — sent 
home by the colonists, the States General 
did make some effort to deal with New 
Netherland on lines of equity. An of- 
ficial inquiry was made into the affairs 
of the West India Company in the year 
1638 that resulted in checking some of the 
worst of the colonial abuses; and that 
also led to the promulgation (1640) of a 
new charter of Liberties and Exemptions 
which materially added to the welfare of 
the colony, and increased the comfort of 
the colonists, by relaxing the regulations 
under which trade was conducted and 
94 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

by easing the conditions under which 
the people lived. 

Kieft, be it said to his credit, gave ef- 
fect to this liberal policy in so liberal a 
spirit that the three ensuing years — until 
almost ruin came with the Indian war 
— probably were the most prosperous in 
the time of Dutch rule. Notably, he en- 
couraged English refugees, fleeing from 
religious persecution in New England, to 
settle in New Netherland; and those 
settlers — maintaining relations with their 
friends and kinsfolk — did much to de- 
velop the intercolonial trade of which I 
have written above. By the year 1642 
the English were so numerous in New 
Amsterdam that the appointment of an 
official interpreter became necessary ; and 
that officer also was required to serve as 
an intermediary between the Dutch mer- 
chants and the English ship-masters who 
95 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

broke the voyage between New England 
and the Virginia plantations by stopping 
here for a bit of trade. 

It was for the accommodation of such 
wayfarers that the City Tavern — which 
later became the Stadt Huys — was built, 
facing Coenties Slip, in the year 1642; 
and it seems to have been built badly, 
as it manifested such a decided dispo- 
sition to tumble to pieces in little more 
than half a century that it was torn 
down. I should be glad to believe that 
hospitality was the corner-stone of that 
nominally hospitable edifice; but I fancy 
that in building it some thought may 
have been taken of the fact that trade 
in a tavern is apt to turn in favor of 
the trader who has the hardest head — 
and it is an incontestable fact that our 
Dutch ancestors had heads upon which 
they could rely. Possibly some of those 

96 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

visiting English skippers carried away in 
their aching heads unkindly memories of 
our City Tavern — as they beat down the 
harbor and out through the Narrows on 
their way to Virginia, or as they affront- 
ed the dangers of Hell Gate on their way 
eastward up the Sound! 

The encouragement that Kieft gave to 
the incoming of the English, and to the 
trade with the neighboring English colo- 
nies, tended to the immediate good of New 
Netherland ; but in the end, of course, the 
influx of those settlers, and the strain- 
ing of relations with the government to 
which they owed allegiance, were the 
chief factors in hastening the downfall 
here of Dutch rule. George Baxter, the 
official interpreter — he seems to have 
been a fuming sort of a person — was one 
of the leaders of the rebellion that broke 
out among the English on Long Island 

7 97 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

in the year 1655; a rebellion that Stuy- 
vesant's temporizing policy did not check, 
and that helped to give a valuable part 
of New Netherland to the English nine 
years before they grabbed it all. 

In another way Kieft's liberal admin- 
istration of more liberal laws led on to 
catastrophe. The increased freedom in 
trading tended to facilitate the supply of 
arms — in exchange for good bargains in 
peltries — to the savages; and so enabled 
the savages to make their winning fight 
when, by Kieft's own abominable act, the 
time for fighting came. From the very 
beginning the trade in arms with the 
Indians offered temptations too strong 
to be resisted by the money - seeking 
Dutch — just as it has offered temptations 
too strong to be resisted by the money- 
seekers of our own time on our western 
frontier. Under Kieft it went on swim- 
98 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

mingly. In those days a musket sold for 
twenty beaver skins, and a pound of gun- 
powder was worth in furs from ten to 
twelve guilders: and so the "bosch- 
lopers," or " runners in the woods," made 
their account with the savages — and gave 
no thought to the reaping of the whirl- 
wind that was to come in sequence to that 
sowing of the wind. 

Actually, the " bosch-lopers " were mere 
agents. The sources of supply of that 
pernicious trade were the capitalists of 
the colony. In the year 1644 a ship 
sent out from Holland by the Patroon 
of Rensselaerswyck — being searched by 
mere accident at New Amsterdam — was 
found to have on board, not on her 
manifest, " four thousand pounds of pow- 
der and seven hundred pieces, to trade 
with the natives." The illicit cargo was 
confiscated with a great show of pro- 

99 
iLofC. 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

priety: but I do not doubt that the 
powder and the pieces got along to the 
natives in due course. In Stuyvesant's 
time (July 9, 1648) "Govert Barent, the 
armourer at Fort Amsterdam," and three 
others were arrested, and two of the four 
"were convicted and sentenced to death 
for violating the proclamation against 
the illicit trade in fire-arms." But the 
convicted and sentenced ones were not 
executed. " By the intervention of 
many good men " they got off from the 
hanging which they richly deserved, and 
nothing worse happened to them than 
the confiscation of their illegally held 
property. In other words, public sen- 
timent was in favor of the trade — in 
which, practically, everybody desired to 
have a hand — and no real attempt was 
made to suppress it because the rulers 
of the colony shared the popular feeling 
100 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

and either were weak or were venal, and 
for the most part were both. The re- 
sponsibility for that sin, as for many- 
others, therefore rests primarily with the 
West India Company: which without ex- 
ception, from Van Twiller's time onward, 
appointed as Directors of New Nether- 
land men utterly unfitted to perform the 
gravely important duties with which they 
were charged. 

As was shown by the official inquiries 
made from time to time into the affairs 
of the colony, usually followed by small 
reforms, the Dutch government was not 
wholly unmindful of the evils wrought by 
the mercenary corporation to which it 
had delegated too great powers ; but, the 
initial error of delegating those powers 
having been committed, not even the 
States General could set right what had 
begun by being, and what continued 

IOI 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

until the end to be, hopelessly wrong. 
From the start, that ill-conceived colo- 
nial venture had in it the seeds of fail- 
ure. The wonder is not that it ended so 
soon, but that it lasted so long. 



XI 



WHEN Peter Stuyvesant, the last of 
those incompetent Directors, took 
over the government of New Netherland 
(May ii, 1647) things were in a hope- 
lessly bad way. Mr. Brodhead, whose 
disposition is to make the best of Dutch 
shortcomings, thus summarizes the situa- 
tion: " Excepting the Long Island settle- 
ments, scarcely fifty bouweries could be 
counted; and the whole province could 
not furnish, at the utmost, more than 
three hundred men capable of bearing 
arms. The savages still were brooding 
over the loss of sixteen hundred of their 
people. Disorder and discontent pre- 
vailed among the commonalty ; the public 
103 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

revenue was in arrear, and smuggling had 
almost ruined legitimate trade; conflict- 
ing claims of jurisdiction were to be 
settled with the colonial patroons; and 
jealous neighbors all around threatened 
the actual dismemberment of the prov- 
ince. Protests had been of no avail ; and 
the decimated population, which had 
hardly been able to protect itself against 
the irritated savages, could offer but a fee- 
ble resistance to the progress of European 
encroachment. Under such embarrassing 
circumstances the last Director General 
of New Netherland began his eventful 
government." And to this Mr. Brodhead 
might have added in set terms what he 
does add virtually by his subsequent pre- 
sentment of facts : that Peter Stuyvesant, 
so far from being the man to set a wrong- 
going colony right, was precisely the man 
to set a right-going colony wrong. 
104 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

Irving, with his accustomed genial 
warping of the truth, has created so 
kindly a caricature of the last of the 
Dutch governors that our disposition is 
to link him with, almost to exalt him to 
the level of, the blessed Saint Nicholas 
— our city's Patron. Such association 
is not justified by the facts, and our 
good Saint — notwithstanding his notable 
charity and humility — most reasonably 
might take exception to it. In truth, 
Stuyvesant had little in common with 
any respectable saint in the calendar ; and 
to come upon the real man — as he is re- 
vealed in the official records of his time 
— is to experience the shock of painful 
discovery. 

The Remonstrance of the year 1649, 
already cited, while dealing generally 
with the manifold misfortunes brought 
upon the colonists by bad government, 

105 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

deals particularly with the misdoings of 
the last Director: who then had been in 
office for only two years and a half, and 
who in that time had succeeded in set- 
ting the whole colony by the ears. " His 
first arrival," declared the remonstrants, 
"was peacock-like, with great state and 
pomposity " ; and the burden of their 
complaint, constantly recurred to, is of 
his brutally dictatorial methods and of 
his coarsely arrogant pride. " His man- 
ner in court," they declare, "has been 
... to browbeat, dispute with, and har- 
ass one of the two parties; not as be- 
seemeth a judge, but like a zealous ad- 
vocate. This has caused great discontent 
everywhere, and has gone so far and 
had such an effect on some that many 
dare not bring any suits before the court 
if they do not stand well, or passably 
so, with the Director; for whom he op- 
106 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

poseth hath both sun and moon against 
him. ... He likewise frequently sub- 
mits his opinion in writing . . . and 
then his word is: 'Gentlemen, this is 
my opinion, if any one have ought to 
object to it, let him express it.' If any 
one then, on the instant, offer objection 
... his Honour bursts forth, inconti- 
nently, into a rage and makes such a to 
do that it is dreadful; yea, he frequently 
abuses the Councillors as this and as that, 
in foul language better befitting the fish- 
market than the Council board; and if 
all this be tolerated, he will not be satis- 
fied until he have his way. ' ' In regard to 
the right of appeal to the home govern- 
ment, his declaration is cited that " Peo- 
ple may think of appealing during my 
time — should any one do so, I would 
have him made a foot shorter, pack the 
pieces off to Holland, and let him appeal 
107 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

in that way." And to this the remon- 
strants added by way of comment: "Oh 
cruel words! What more could a sover- 
eign do?" 

As the tone of the complainings shows, 
there was another side to all this. Ac- 
cording to his lights (which were few) 
and within his limitations (which were 
many) Stuyvesant was in the way of be- 
ing a reformer: and reformers ever have 
been painted blackest by those whom 
they sought to reform. That outrageous 
little colony needed a deal of reforming 
when he took over its government; and 
had his mandatory proclamations stop- 
ped with the one that forbade "sabbath 
breaking, brawling, and drunkenness," he 
still would have had a hornets' nest about 
his ears. Fancy what would have been 
the consensus of opinion on the part of 
the leading citizens of Fort Leavenworth 
108 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

had any reforming person fired off at 
them a proclamation of that sort in the 
old days of the Santa Fe Trail! But 
Stuyvesant's reforms cut deeper. Not 
content with trying to reduce to decency 
the energetic social customs of the colo- 
nists, he tried also to bring them up to the 
line of honest dealing: and so struck at 
their pockets as well as at their hearts. 
He forbade the sale of liquor to the 
savages: a most profitable business in 
itself, and of much indirect advantage 
to those engaged in it — because an in- 
toxicated savage obviously was more 
desirable than a sober savage to bargain 
with for furs. He made stringent reg- 
ulations which checked the profitable 
industry of smuggling peltries into New 
England, and European goods thence 
into New Netherland. He issued revo- 
lutionary commands that the frowsy 
109 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

and draggle-tailed little town should be 
set in order and cleansed. And on top 
of all this, farther to replenish the ex- 
hausted treasury of the colony, he levied 
a tax upon liquors and wines. That was 
the climax of his offending. As the out- 
raged and indignant colonists themselves 
declared — becomingly falling back upon 
holy writ for a strong enough simile — 
the wine and liquor tax was "like the 
crowning of Rehoboam!" 

It is not surprising that such a com- 
munity should be at odds with such a 
ruler. Nearly half a century later, when 
New Amsterdam had become New York, 
a like resentful commotion was stirred 
up by another and a far better reform 
governor, Lord Bellomont : who was sent 
out from England to put down, and 
who did put down, the pirates and smug- 
glers then nourishing in this town. But 
no 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

Lord Bellomont was a strong man and a 
just man — who carried through his re- 
forms to a masterly finish precisely be- 
cause his sense of justice restrained him 
from making an arbitrary use of his 
strength. Stuyvesant was neither strong 
nor just, and he was arbitrary to the last 
degree. Considering the material that 
he had to work on, and considering also 
the manners and customs of his times, his 
headstrong ways and his coarse speech 
admit of palliation. No doubt he gave 
those equally headstrong and equally 
foul-mouthed colonists pretty much what, 
in one way, they deserved. But provo- 
cation is not justification. The capital 
error of his government was not its 
harshness but its arbitrary harshness. He 
seems to have been a waspish little 
man, with a testy temper that ever dis- 
posed him to fly into a rage with any- 
iii 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

body who in the smallest particular con- 
tradicted him; and, assuredly, he lacked 
the sagacity that might have saved him 
from letting fly his choleric outbursts with 
an indiscriminating violence that destroy- 
ed the moral effect of what very often, no 
doubt, was his righteous wrath. 

Under such a government as Stuy- 
vesant gave to that unfortunate colony 
there could be no real improvement in its 
affairs. Even when his attempted re- 
forms were sound — and for the most part 
they were sound — the effect of them was 
weakened, and their realization was made 
difficult or impossible, by the manner in 
which they were applied. 




THE VISSCHER MAP, WITH A VIEW OF > ' 








M A R 



T) F. L 




\ o\ i Heigh 







ISTERDAM DRAWN BEFORE THE YEAR 1653 



XII 

BUT a better man than Stuyvesant 
— while he might have lost it with 
more dignity — could not have saved to 
Holland the colony of New Netherland. 
Forces from within and forces from with- 
out were working for its destruction. In- 
ternally, its affairs were administered with 
incompetence tempered with injustice — 
and it owed its bad government to the 
fact that it was but a by-venture in a 
great scheme of combined money-making 
and statecraft; and to the farther fact 
that it was more and more neglected, 
or remembered only to be more tightly 
squeezed, as the ruinous end of the West 
India Company drew near. Externally, 

8 113 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

the English constantly were pressing more 
closely upon its borders: strong in their 
determination to have the whole of it; 
and in the mean time taking possession 
of such scraps of it — as the eastern end 
of Long Island — as dropped loose of their 
own accord. Such conditions led inev- 
itably to the loss of that which never 
had been well held. 

The evil star of the West India Com- 
pany was the most conspicuous among 
the several stars in their courses which 
fought against the Dutch in their struggle 
to hold fast to their American colonies. 
The condition of the Company never was 
sound financially. By heroic marauding 
it did acquire a vast sum of money — 
which went as quickly as it came. But 
the Company absolutely failed to build 
up in any part of its dominions a sub- 
stantial legitimate trade from which it 
114 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

could draw securely a stable revenue. Its 
nearest approach to founding a well- 
ordered colony was in the Brazils, under 
the one competent governor that it ever 
sent out from Holland: Count John 
Maurice of Nassau. Under the wise rule 
of that excellent ruler a liberal scheme 
of trade regulations was established; re- 
ligious toleration was assured ; and for all 
classes alike there was just enforcement 
of, and equal protection under, a just code 
of laws. But, to quote Dr. Asher, " even 
Count John Maurice's brilliant talents 
yielded no pecuniary profits. Compelled 
by the strict and reiterated orders of the 
Directors of the Company, he had to carry 
on an incessant war with the Portuguese 
in southern Brazil. Great part of his rev- 
enue consisted of booty; and his troops 
ruined more than they took away — draw- 
ing upon the Dutch possessions similar 
ii5 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

acts of retribution from the enraged 
enemy. Among those horrors of border 
warfare agriculture and trade could not 
survive." If such a state of affairs ob- 
tained in the best managed of the Com- 
pany's colonies, and at a time when the 
Company was in a flourishing condition, 
we need not be surprised that the state 
of affairs in its worst managed colony — 
our own New Netherland — became al- 
most unendurable as the Company drew 
nearer and nearer to collapse. 

From the year 1630 onward the Com- 
pany's finances showed, as Dr. Asher puts 
it, "a terribly constant downward ten- 
dency. ' ' Only a year after it had paid its 
famous dividend upon its treasure-ship 
winnings, and out of its remaining sur- 
plus had lent 600,000 guilders to the 
Dutch government, it was unable to meet 
its running expenses. Under its charter 
116 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

it was entitled to a subsidy; but the 
government — partly because of lack of 
funds, but more because of the adverse 
action taken by the dominant political 
ring — was slack in making the promised 
payments and the subsidy fell badly into 
arrear. Money from other sources was 
not forthcoming. No colonial trade of 
importance had been developed ; and the 
plan for breaking Spain's line of com- 
munication with her colonial treasure- 
houses had been executed so effectively 
that it had reacted upon its projectors 
after the manner of a boomerang; that 
is to say, although the Company had to 
carry the load of an armed fleet created 
mainly to bag Spanish plate-ships, the 
seas were empty of plate-ships to be 
bagged. 

Bad luck had something to do with 
the Company's misfortunes, but at the 
117 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

root of them was bad management. The 
same stupidity, or worse, that was shown 
in the conduct of the affairs of our own 
little New Netherland was shown on a 
larger scale in the conduct of the far 
more important affairs in Brazil. At the 
end of a long series of quarrels with the 
Council, Count John Maurice resigned his 
commission in disgust in the year 1644. 
His successors, for the most part, were 
incompetents. When they happened to 
possess wits they used them in betraying 
the Company's interests — for a consider- 
ation — to the Portuguese. It took just 
ten years of that sort of thing to bring 
matters to their logical climax. In the 
year 1654 the Company's troops evacu- 
ated the Brazils. 

Ten years more brought the end of 
everything. Dr. Asher puts the record 
of those ten calamitous years into a few 
118 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

words. "We cannot here attempt," he 
writes, "to describe the Company's last 
agony : its vain attempts to combine with 
the East India Company; its painful ef- 
forts to obtain from the government 
either armed assistance or payment of its 
arrears. The symptoms of bankruptcy 
became saddening and more threatening 
from year to year. At last its creditors 
began to seize the Company's property. 
The death blow was struck in 1664 — 
when New Netherland, the Company's 
last valuable possession, was conquered 
by the English." And so that rather 
grandly conceived, but consistently ill 
executed enterprise, came to a miserable 
end. As a warning, the history of its few 
triumphs and of its many failures has 
a permanent value. And especially does 
its history point the moral that it is 
unwise, to say the least, to try to get 
119 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

from invested patriotism a dividend in 
cash. 

Conceivably, by the exercise of a small 
amount of common sense, the Dutch 
might have retained their holding- 
Brazil; but from their holdings in Xorth 
America — New Xetherland. and the 
colony on the Delaware — the common 
sense of all the age? could not have 
saved them from being squeezed out. 
There they were at grips with a 
stronger than their own in numbers, and 
not less strong in sheer grit. For thirty 
years ' .:' re the end came, the English 
were pressing in upon their territory from 
the sast and from the south: while across 
s - with a large statesmanship, the 
lish government was taking a hand 
in putting oil the screws. 

The most effective twist of the English 
screw was the ; assage by the Common- 

[20 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

wealth Parliament (October 9, 1651) of 
the Navigation Act: which decreed that 
goods imported into England must come 
in English ships or in ships belonging to 
the country in which the goods were 
produced. As the Dutch at that time 
had the carrying trade of the world pretty 
well in their hands, the English law was 
in the nature of some of our own highly 
impersonal legislation affecting " cities of 
the first class. ' ' No names were mention- 
ed — but it hit where it was meant to hit, 
and it hit hard. A loud buzzing of am- 
bassadors followed that shot at Dutch 
commerce. But the propositions made 
by Holland — that there should be free 
trade to the West Indies and to Virginia, 
and that " a just, certain, and immovable 
boundary line" should be fixed between 
the English and the Dutch territories in 
America — came to nothing ; and so, pres- 
121 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

ently, there was the louder buzzing of 
guns. In the handsome little war that 
followed (1652-54), the English — while 
practically gaining what they fought for 
— experienced the unusual sensation of 
being soundly whipped at sea. Blake 
fairly was driven to take shelter in the 
Thames : after which Tromp went sailing 
up and down the Channel with that ag- 
gravating broom at his mast-head, to 
which reference is inexpedient in talking 
with the average Englishman even now. 

Here in Manhattan there was a great 
show of bellicosity while that waspish 
little war went on. It was then — under 
orders from Holland to put the town in a 
state of defence — that our famous wall 
was built along the line of what now is 
Wall Street. Thomas Baxter (who proved 
himself to be a very bad lot, a little later) 
had the contract for supplying the pali- 
122 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

sadoes which were intended to stand off 
his own countrymen ; but which, in point 
of fact, never stood off anything more 
dangerously aggressive than wandering 
cows. Also, the city watch was strength- 
ened ; and preparations for a naval demon- 
stration (in the event of a hostile fleet 
appearing before the city) were made by 
ordering Schipper Visscher " to keep his 
sails always ready, and to have his gun 
loaded day and night." In a word, we 
all were full of fight in that strenuous 
time — but, mercifully, carnage was avert- 
ed. It takes two armies to make a 
battle: and the English army, for which 
we were waiting in so blood-thirsty a 
mood, discreetly remained at a safe dis- 
tance from our pugnacious little fume of 
a town. 



XIII 

STUYVESANT showed both manli- 
ness and good common sense in deal- 
ing with the most threatening feature of 
that really volcanic situation : the charge 
made by the New - Englanders that he 
had endeavored to stir up against them 
an Indian revolt. He met the charge 
promptly by inviting the Commissioners* 
to send delegates to New Amsterdam to 
investigate it — and when they came he 
refuted it. More than that, he submitted 

* The colonies of New Plymouth, Massachusetts, 
Connecticut and New Haven became confeder- 
ated, May 19, 1643, as "The United Colonies of 
New England." The administration of the affairs 
of the confederacy was intrusted to a board con- 
sisting of two commissioners from each colony. 

124 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

to the delegates very reasonable and just 
propositions for the regulation of inter- 
colonial affairs. In substance, those prop- 
ositions were: I. Neighborly friendship, 
without regard to the hostilities in 
Europe; II. Continuance of trade as be- 
fore; III. Mutual justice against fraudu- 
lent debtors; IV. A defensive and offen- 
sive alliance against common enemies. 
But the delegates refused to entertain his 
propositions, and went back to Boston in 
an unexplained but quite unmistakable 
huff. Very likely they had an instinctive 
feeling that treaties were unnecessary — 
since, without treaties, things were com- 
ing their way. 

Moreover, the desire of the New-Eng- 
landers to fight the Dutch was strong. 
Patriotism may have been at the root of 
that desire, but its more obvious motive 
was a mere commonplace human longing 

125 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEWYORK 

to lay hands on valuable Dutch property. 
Rhode Island— in those years, and for 
many succeeding years, the abode of 
notoriously hard characters — even made 
a start at a little war of spoliation on its 
own account. Two loose fish of thievish 
proclivities, Dyer and Underhill, were 
granted a license by that disreputable 
colony (June 3, 1653) to "take all Dutch 
ships and vessels as shall come into their 
power"; and the energetic Thomas Bax- 
ter — fresh from his palisading operation 
in Wall Street, and very likely using the 
profits of that operation in fitting out his 
expedition — also got a predatory license 
from Rhode Island ("turned pirate," is 
the way that Mr. Brodhead puts it) and 
made a spirited looting cruise along the 
Sound: that was ended by his being " run 
in" not by the Dutch but by the au- 
thorities of New Haven. 
126 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

Only the action of Massachusetts at 
that juncture averted what would have 
been a most horrid little war between the 
Dutch and the English colonies; and, as 
it was, the war was escaped by a very 
close shave. The delegates, being come 
again to Boston, presented their report 
of the evidence that had been laid before 
them, in New Amsterdam and elsewhere, 
for and against the alleged Dutch plot to 
excite an Indian rising; and the matter 
was referred to a conference of "divers 
neighbouring elders," held before the 
General Court of Massachusetts, with in- 
structions to find out "what the Lord 
calleth to do." The elders found proofs 
enough to " induce them to believe " in the 
reality of " that late execrable plot, tend- 
ing to the destruction of so many dear 
saints of God, which is imputed to the 
Dutch governor and fiscal"; but they 
127 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

did not find the proofs " so fully conclu- 
sive as to clear up present proceedings 
to war." Thereupon the General Court 
voted that they were not " called to make 
a present war with the Dutch." 

That mild decision was not well re- 
ceived. Voicing the popular feeling — 
and with the bellicose tendencies of his 
cloth — the " teacher of the church at 
Salem" wrote to urge immediate hos- 
tilities: the postponement of which, he 
declared, already "had caused many a 
pensive heart." Six out of the eight 
Commissioners were at one with this 
kindly gentleman in his desire for vica- 
rious blood-letting. Solidly they cast 
their votes for instant war. Fortunately, 
the members of the General Court of 
Massachusetts kept their heads. Rest- 
ing their opinion upon the terms of the 
colonial Articles of Confederation, they 
128 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

declared that it was beyond the powers 
of " six commissioners of the other colo- 
nies to put forth any act of power in a 
vindictive war, whereby they shall com- 
mand the colonies dissenting to assist 
them in the same." That declaration — 
which virtually was a declaration, near- 
ly two centuries in advance of its recog- 
nized existence, of the doctrine of State 
Rights — saved the day. The Commission- 
ers sent to Stuyvesant " a peevish reply " : 
telling him that his " confident denials 
of the barbarous plot charged will weigh 
little in the balance against such evi- 
dence" as that which they had secured; 
and adding the broad and vague threat 
that "we must still require and seek due 
satisfaction and security." But their 
vaporing led to nothing, and the war 
did not come off. Massachusetts spoke 
the final word — in reply to a request 
» 129 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

from Connecticut that "by war, if no 
other means will serve, the Dutch at and 
about the Manhatoes, who have been and 
still are like to prove injurious and dan- 
gerous neighbours, may be removed." 
To that intemperate request the tem- 
perate answer was given that Massachu- 
setts refused to act "in so weighty a con- 
cernment as to send forth men to shed 
blood" unless satisfied "that God calls 
for it ; and then it must be clear and not 
doubtful, necessary and expedient." 

That persistent stand for peace was 
due in part, no doubt, to the fact that 
between Massachusetts and New Nether- 
land there was no such sharp conflict 
of interests as there was between New 
Netherland and the nearer-lying English 
colonies; that, on the contrary, there was 
even a certain friendliness between the 
two because of the trade that went on, to 
130 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

their common advantage, between Bos- 
ton and New Amsterdam. But I think 
that what really prevented the war was 
Stuyvesant's promptness and frankness 
in dealing with the charge that he had 
sought to stir up an Indian revolt. The 
clearness of his defence, and his straight- 
forward way of making it, constituted an 
appeal to the sense of right which then 
and always was characteristic of the 
Massachusetts colonists ; and that appeal, 
I am persuaded, counted for more with 
them than did the feeling of friendliness 
begotten of common interests in trade. 

The fact is to be noted that Stuy vesant 
uniformly showed in what may be termed 
his foreign policy a far greater wisdom 
than he usually showed in his domestic 
policy. His one important aggressive act 
— his reduction (1655) of the Swedish 
colony on the Delaware, in dealing with 

131 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

which Irving has quite outdone himself 
in a farrago of mingled nonsense and 
falsehood — was admirably planned and 
most successfully executed. He gained 
his end, without any fighting whatever, 
by the menacing display of an effective 
superior force: a method, it will be ob- 
served, that accords precisely with the 
rules laid down by the highest modern 
authorities on the art of war. It is true 
that in the Treaty of Hartford (1650) he 
yielded too much to the English ; but his 
concessions materially lessened the dan- 
gerous border troubles, and the treaty 
certainly was beneficial for a time. His 
dealings with Virginia were to still better 
purpose. Even while the war between 
Holland and England was in progress — 
in accordance with his desire, scouted by 
the New - Englanders, for "neighbourly 
friendship, without regard to the hostil- 
132 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

ities in Europe " — he made two attempts 
to conclude a commercial treaty with the 
Virginia authorities ; and he succeeded in 
effecting with them a favorable working 
arrangement in the year 1653 that led on 
to the more formal and equally favorable 
convention of the year 1660. 

The Virginia trade began to be of im- 
portance in the year 1652, when the ex- 
port tax on tobacco shipped from New 
Netherland was removed; a concession 
on the part of the Amsterdam Chamber 
with which were united a reduction of the 
price of passage from Holland outward, 
and permission — here was the beginning 
of our slave trade — for the colonists to 
import negroes from Africa. A hint of 
trade direct with the Spanish colonies is 
found, also, in a list of charges brought 
(1653) by the West India Company 
against the proprietors of Rensselaer- 

133 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

wyck; one of those charges being that 
" licenses have been granted to private in- 
dividuals to sail to the coast of Florida." 
I should like to follow up that interest- 
ing lead, but there is little to go upon in 
the indiscreetly reticent records of the 
time. One other important trace of it 
I have found: in a letter (February 13, 
1659) from the Amsterdam Chamber to 
the Director General and Council in New 
Netherland granting " a larger liberty to 
the inhabitants there to trade ... to 
France, Spain, Italy, the Caribbee islands, 
and other parts, to dispose of and sell 
their freighted products, salted fish, wares 
and merchandise " ; subject to the restric- 
tion that they " shall be obliged and 
bound to return direct either here before 
this city of Amsterdam or back to New 
Netherland to the place of your Honours' 
abode, in order to pay to your Honours, 
134 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

on the discharge and sale thereof, such 
duties as the Company here derives from 
them." Bearing on this matter, but a 
little beside it, is a minute (July 10, 1655) 
of the States General touching a memo- 
rial presented by the Spanish ambassador 
requesting that one " Sebastien Raef, a 
Captain or privateer committing piracies 
in the West Indies on the subjects of the 
Most Illustrious King" should be arrest- 
ed in Amsterdam; and " that the govern- 
ment of New Netherland be instructed 
to arrest in their harbours Joan van 
Kampen, his lieutenant, together with his 
ship and effects, that law and justice be 
administered to the one and the other, 
for the behoof of the interested, with in- 
fliction of exemplary punishment for the 
piracies they have committed." From 
which we may infer that somewhat liberal 
notions obtained in New Netherland as 
135 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

to the scope of commercial relations with 
the colonies of Spain. 

Putting incidental piracies out of the 
question, Stuyvesant certainly endeavor- 
ed — according to his lights — to foster the 
foreign trade of New Netherland. His 
voyage to the West Indies in the year 
1655 was made expressly to that end; and 
his consistent effort seems to have been 
to make New Amsterdam a little metrop- 
olis in which should centre the American 
colonial trade. Possibly I am going too 
far in crediting him with the deliberate 
formulation and pursuit of a policy in 
which was such large statesmanship; but 
it is, at least, an interesting and a sugges- 
tive fact that most of his plans touching 
the exterior affairs of the colony do wear 
the look of having been conceived in the 
spirit of one who had that great end in 
view. 

136 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW fORK 

Unfortunately, Stuyvesant did not 
show in dealing with home matters the 
excellent qualities which he showed in 
dealing with intercolonial matters. Had 
he done so his record would have been a 
very different one, and his governorship 
— while ending in the always inevitable 
loss of his province — would have ended 
without disgrace. The shame of the tak- 
ing of New Netherland by the English 
was not that it was conquered ; it was that 
its people — in their eagerness to escape 
from a government that had become in- 
tolerable — almost welcomed their con- 
querors. But only the more because of 
his bad domestic policy does the last 
Director need the praise, that assuredly 
is due to him, for his good foreign policy ; 
and most of all does he deserve praise for 
his share — a good half of the credit be- 
longs to Massachusetts — in so handling 

137 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

the matters at issue with the New Eng- 
land colonies as to avert a war in which 
the meanest sordid motives would have 
found vent in a truly horrible way. I 
suppose that there can be nothing more 
despairingly cruel than a fight to the 
death, having greed for its motive, be- 
tween two castaways on a desert island 
in a lonely sea: and it would have been 
much that sort of a fight between the 
handful of English and the handful of 
Dutch, then living remote and isolated in 
the American wilderness, had they come 
to blows. 



XIV 

IN the thick of that troublous time, 
while Holland and England were at 
open war and while the threat of war 
hung over their dependent colonies, the 
long-cherished desire of New Amsterdam 
to become a city was realized. As a 
matter of course, it was not realized in a 
satisfactory way — nothing was satisfac- 
tory to anybody, to state the case broad- 
ly, in which the West India Company 
had a hand; but, at least, on February 2, 
1653, the civic government was estab- 
lished which, in one form or another, 
has been maintained on this island until 
this present day. 

By the terms of the grant, from the 

i39 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

Amsterdam Chamber, the municipal or- 
ganization of New Amsterdam was to 
resemble " as much as possible " that of 
the parent city in Holland; but, as the 
matter worked out in practice, the possi- 
bilities proved to be so limited that the 
resemblance was in the nature of a car- 
icature. Stuyvesant set up and main- 
tained his right to appoint the members 
of the city government — the burgo- 
masters, schepens, secretary, and schout 
— with the natural result that his au- 
thority continued to be paramount in 
civic matters; and in general he con- 
trived to make the new order of things 
very much the same as the old order so 
far as any real increase of liberties was 
concerned. In a word, as Mr. Brodhead 
puts it: "The ungraceful concessions of 
the grudging Chamber were hampered by 
the most illiberal interpretation which 
140 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

their provincial representative could de- 
vise." For Mr. Brodhead — whose dis- 
position toward the Director uniformly 
is kindly — those are very strong words. 
But they are amply justified by the facts. 
With a modernity of method that our 
citizens of that period resented more 
keenly (being unaccustomed to it) than 
we resent it now, Stuyvesant made out 
his "slate"; and then — with a directness 
that a Tammany leader would weep over 
in envy — put in his men by the simple 
process of issuing a proclamation in which 
they were assigned to their several offices. 
Save in our spasmodic lucid intervals of 
civic reform, we still get by ways only 
a trifle more roundabout to just the 
same practical results — and philologists, 
with these early facts available for their 
study, will perceive with pleasure the nice 
linguistic propriety that there is in our 
141 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

present use of the Dutch word "boss." 
On the very instant that this city be- 
came a city the political meaning of 
that word, in effect, was established and 
defined. 

Some of the men named on Stuy- 
vesant's "slate," as is the custom nowa- 
days, were respectable citizens. More of 
them, still in accordance with modern 
custom, were not. And — fitting to a 
hair with Tammany methods — the most 
important office was given to the worst 
of them all. For Schout — an official who, 
in addition to presiding over the Board of 
Burgomasters and Schepens, performed 
duties which in a way combined those 
of our modern sheriff and district attor- 
ney — Stuyvesant appointed Cornelis van 
Tienhoven, the Company's Fiscal: and 
had he searched through the whole col- 
ony he probably could not have found a 
142 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

man more outrageously unfit for any 
office at all. 

In the summary, prepared by order of 
the States General, of the Remonstrance 
of 1649, Van Tienhoven is thus pleasingly 
described: "He is subtle, crafty, intel- 
ligent, sharp witted for evil; one of the 
oldest inhabitants in the country; is con- 
versant with all the circumstances both 
of Christians and Indians, hath even 
associated with the savages through 
lechery; he is a dissembler, double-faced, 
a cheat; the whole country proclaims 
him a knave, a murderer, a traitor, in- 
asmuch as he by false reports originated 
the war [the Indian war of 1643]. He 
holds the office of Secretary, wherein he 
perpetrates all conceivable sorts of blun- 
ders, now against one, now against an- 
other, even against his own employers; 
he fleeces the people." 

143 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

To this arraignment may be added the 
testimony of Hendrick van Dyck, given 
a year earlier (1652) when he was super- 
seded in his office of Fiscal by — to use 
his own kindly words — "the perjured, 
godless Cornelis Tienhoven." Van Dyck 
uplifted his testimony in these terms: 
"Were an honorable gentleman put in 
my place, the false accusations which 
the Director [Stuyvesant] made and sent 
over against me long ago might have 
some semblance of truth ; but his perjured 
secretary, Cornelis van Tienhoven, who 
returned hither contrary to the pro- 
hibition of their High Mightinesses; who 
is known, and can be proved to all the 
world, to be a * * * and perjurer; who is 
a disgrace to, and the sole affliction of, 
Christians and heathens in this country, 
and whom the Director always hath man- 
aged to shield — this is the person whom 
144 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

the Director hath of his own authority 
appointed Fiscal!" It is only just to 
add that Van Dyck's genial deliverance 
was made against a man who had ousted 
him from a lucrative office and also, as 
is apparent, while he himself was under 
fire. Obviously, he had his little prej- 
udices, and he certainly did not hesitate 
to express them with an engaging frank- 
ness. But the fact remains that every- 
thing in his statement is borne out by the 
records — excepting, perhaps, the asser- 
tion that Van Tienhoven was " the sole 
affliction of Christians and heathens." 
That is too exclusive. The Christians 
and heathens resident in New Amster- 
dam were variously and very generally 
afflicted in those unhappy days. 

Touching the affair of Van Tienhoven 
and poor Lysbet van Hoogvelt, "the 
daughter of the basket-maker in Amster- 
145 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

dam," the dry and formal records of two 
centuries and a half ago suddenly cease to 
be dry and formal and become warmly 
alive. It is inexpedient to quote in full 
the several long depositions taken in Hol- 
land in the matter, and it also is need- 
less: a few extracts from those ancient 
documents will suffice to make the case 
clear. Louisa Noe, " who speaks by her 
woman's troth, instead of oath," testified 
that there came to her " to engage lodg- 
ings for himself and a young lady ... a 
certain corpulent and thickset person, of 
red and bloated visage and light hair, 
who she afterward understood was called 
Van Tienhoven." Margaretta van Eeda, 
' ' tavern - keeper in old Haerlem at the 
Sluice," bearing witness "upon her ve- 
racity and conscience, instead of upon 
oath," testified — in more kindly terms 
as to my gentleman's personal appear- 
146 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

ance — that "over a year ago there came 
to lodge at her house a likely person of 
ruddy face, corpulent body, and having 
a little wen on the side of his cheek, who 
she afterward understood was from New 
Netherland, having with him a woman 
toward whom he evinced great friendship 
and love, calling her always 'Dearest,' 
and conversing with her as man and wife 
are wont to do." Elizabeth Janns, inn- 
keeper, of The Arms of Haerlem, testified 
that "a person named Mr. Cornells van 
Tienhoven came divers times to the 
house of the deponent, keeping open 
tavern . . . with Lysbet Janssen Croon 
van Hoogvelt . . . and have there at 
different times, now and then, eaten fish 
and showed and manifested toward each 
other great love and friendship, such as 
is the custom among sweethearts." And 
the end of the story is told in a letter 
147 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

written here in Manhattan by Augustin 
Heermans, September 20, 1651: "The 
basket - maker's daughter, whom Van 
Tienhoven brought from Holland on a 
promise of marriage, coming here and 
finding he was already married, hath 
exposed his conduct even in the public 
court." That exposure, as is evident, 
did him no harm. Less than a year 
later Stuyvesant appointed him Fiscal, 
and less than two years later appointed 
him Schout — and so made him the chief 
officer of the then new-born city that 
now is New York. 

I have dwelt at length upon Van 
Tienhoven's personal record, and I have 
revived this ancient scandal in which 
poor Lysbet had so cruel a part (and, too, 
after they had "eaten fish and showed 
and manifested toward each other great 
love and friendship"!) because such de- 
148 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

tailed statement is necessary to support 
convincingly my general assertions touch- 
ing the immorals of the inhabitants and 
of the rulers of this unfortunate town. 
There was, indeed, a popular outcry 
against Van Tienhoven's appointment; 
but it seems to have been based mainly 
on the ground that he was unfit to be 
Schout because he still continued to be an 
officer, the Fiscal, of the Company — not 
on the broader and very tenable ground 
that he was an unfit person to hold any 
public office at all. And, also, the out- 
cry came in part — as in the case of the 
shady Van Dyck, who had been "turned 
down " in Van Tienhoven's favor — from 
citizens whose right to object to anybody 
on the score of immorals was of a highly 
attenuated sort. In the end, to be sure, 
he was turned out of his office in disgrace 
by order of the West India Company ; and 
149 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

Stuyvesant was forbidden again to em- 
ploy him — or to employ his brother, 
Adriaen, who had been detected in fraud 
as receiver general — in the public service. 
But that order was a lashing of Stuy- 
vesant over Van Tienhoven's shoulders, 
and it was not issued until Van Tien- 
hoven had been Schout of the city for 
three years. Even Tammany has not 
beaten this record in civic immorality 
which our city scored at its very start. 



XV 

ON December 10, 1653, " the most im- 
portant popular convention that had 
ever been assembled in New Netherland," 
to quote Mr. Brodhead's words, met in 
the Stadt Huys of New Amsterdam. That 
convention — being a gathering of rep- 
resentatives of the capital city, of the 
near-by Dutch towns, and of the English 
towns on Long Island — was in the way 
of being an impotent parliament: that 
came together not as a governing and 
law - making body but to remonstrate 
against the existing government, and 
against the tangle of inequitable laws (still 
farther complicated by arbitrary edicts) 
in which the colonists were involved. 
151 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

What gave that queer little parliament 
its chief significance was the presence, for 
the first time in Dutch councils, of English 
delegates; and the fact that those dele- 
gates came to the council rightfully, as 
representatives of their fellow - country- 
men legally subject to the government of 
New Netherland, did not make them 
any the less representatives of the race 
that was crowding out the Dutch from 
their holding in the new world. 

It was at the instance of the English, 
indeed, that the council was convened. 
Long Island had been filling up steadily 
with English settlers, and those settlers 
took even less kindly than did the Dutch 
to the eccentricities and the inefficiencies 
of the government under which they 
lived. Especially did they resent the 
failure of that government to protect 
them against the many little freebooters 
i5 2 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

— of the Thomas Baxter stripe — who 
committed highly annoying robberies 
along the borders of the Sound; and 
against the many stray savages who, as 
occasion offered, engaged in little ravag- 
ings and murderings of a distasteful sort. 
Also, they had the characteristic English 
longing to be let alone in the manage- 
ment of their local affairs. Out of which 
conditions arose among them the not 
unreasonable desire either to be taken 
care of, or to be given a free hand in 
taking care of themselves. 

In order to talk matters over with the 
Dutch authorities, representatives came 
up from Gravesend and Flushing and 
Newtown; and a conference was held in 
the Stadt Huys (November 26, 1653) "to 
consider what could be done "for the 
welfare of the country and its inhabi- 
tants," and "to determine on some wise 

153 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

and salutary measures" which should 
bring up the Sound pirates with a round 
turn. The Dutch representatives who 
met them — members of the city govern- 
ment and of the Provincial Council — see- 
ing their way to grinding some axes of 
their own, recommended that a general 
statement of grievances should be em- 
bodied, as usual, in a " remonstance " ; and 
that with the remonstrance, also as usual, 
should be coupled a prayer for relief. 
That method of procedure being agreed 
to, an adjournment of a fortnight was 
decided upon : to the end that the views 
of the colonists of Long Island and of 
Staten Island might be obtained more 
fully, and that a larger number of dele- 
gates might be got together; in effect, 
that the informal meeting might be raised 
to the dignity of a little Landtag. Stuy- 
vesant had no relish for such doings. The 
i54 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

action of the English, he declared, " smelt 
of rebellion" and of "contempt of his 
high authority and commission." But 
the popular will was too strong for him 
— or he was too weak to control it, which 
amounted to the same thing — and he 
"very reluctantly sanctioned the meet- 
ing that he could not prevent." Accord- 
ingly, on December ioth, with an aug- 
mented membership, the council was re- 
convened. Four Dutch towns and four 
English towns were represented, and the 
delegates — apparently chosen on a basis 
of numerical representation — were ten 
of Dutch and nine of English nativity. 
And all of them, without regard to 
nationality, harmoniously were agreed to 
pool their grievances and to go for 
Director Stuyvesant horns down! 

Considering how serious those griev- 
ances were, the Remonstrance which 
*55 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

they formulated was couched in ex- 
traordinarily temperate terms. That 
document was drawn by one of the 
representatives from Gravesend, Ensign 
George Baxter — who is not to be con- 
founded with the piratical Thomas — and 
as the work of an Englishman it is all the 
more remarkable for its tone of loyal- 
ty to the government of Holland. The 
preamble runs in these words: "Com- 
posed of various nations from different 
parts of the world, leaving at our own 
expense our country and countrymen, we 
voluntarily came under the protection of 
our sovereign High and Mighty Lords the 
States General, whom we acknowledge as 
our lieges; and being made members of 
one body, subjected ourselves, as in duty 
bound, to the general laws of the United 
Provinces, and all other new orders and 
ordinances which by virtue of the afore- 
156 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

said authority may be published, agree- 
ably to the customs freedoms grants and 
privileges of the Netherlands." 

What the remonstrants did object to, 
and pointedly, was the publication of 
new orders and ordinances which dis- 
tinctly were disagreeable to the customs, 
and still more disagreeable to the free- 
doms, of the home country. The first 
and the main charge of their remon- 
strance was that such orders and or- 
dinances had been enacted by the Direc- 
tor and Council "without the knowledge 
or consent of the people," and that the 
same were " contrary to the granted 
privileges of the Netherland govern- 
ment, and odious to every free born man, 
and especially so to those whom God 
has placed under a free state in newly 
settled lands, who are entitled to claim 
laws not transcending, but resembling as 

i57 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

nearly as possible, those of the Nether- 
lands." 

Joined with this remonstrance in chief 
— which, in effect, was no more than an 
assertion of the fact that the colonists 
were denied common right and common 
justice — minor remonstrance was made 
against the failure of the provincial gov- 
ernment to protect persons and prop- 
erty; against the obligation to obey "old 
orders and proclamations of the Director 
and Council, made without the knowledge 
or consent of the people," which " subject 
them to loss and punishment through 
ignorance"; against the "wrongful and 
suspicious delay " in confirming land 
patents; against land grants to favored 
individuals " to the great injury of the 
Province " ; and against the appointment 
of officers and magistrates "without the 
consent or nomination of the people 

158 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

. . . contrary to the laws of the Nether- 
lands." In conclusion, the authors of 
that surprisingly modest appeal added: 
"As we have, for easier reference, re- 
duced all our grievances to six heads, we 
renew our allegiance, in the hope that 
satisfaction will be granted to the coun- 
try according to established justice, and 
all dissensions be settled and allayed." 

There is a very marked difference be- 
tween the verbose and mean complain- 
ings of the more famous Remonstrance 
of the year 1649 an d the simple direct- 
ness and dignity of this demand for 
obvious rights; and had there been any 
"established justice" for New Nether- 
land — either in the provincial govern- 
ment or in the home government — it 
could not have been met, as it was met, 
by a flat refusal all around. Stuyvesant 
made answer to it by a general denial, 

159 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

that included a particular denial of the 
right of the delegates to assemble; and 
when the delegates replied, in turn, by 
an appeal to that natural law "which 
permits all men to assemble for the pro- 
tection of their liberties and their prop- 
erty," he tersely ordered them to disperse 
"on pain of our highest displeasure"; 
to which lordly mandate, by way of a 
cracker, he added: "We derive our au- 
thority from God and the Company, not 
from a few ignorant subjects; and we 
alone can call the inhabitants together." 
In Holland, when the Remonstrance got 
there, the answer was the same. The 
Directors of the Company wrote to Stuy- 
vesant (May 18, 1654) in these terms: 
" We are unable to discover in the whole 
Remonstrance one single point to justify 
complaint. . . . You ought to have acted 
with more vigor against the ringleaders 
160 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

of the gang. ... It is our express com- 
mand that you punish what has occurred 
as it deserves, so that others may be 
deterred in future from following such 
examples." And at the same time the 
Directors wrote to the Burgomasters and 
Schepens of New Amsterdam command- 
ing " that you conduct yourselves quietly 
and peaceably, submit yourselves to the 
government placed over you, and in no 
wise allow yourselves to hold particular 
convention with the English or others 
in matters of form and deliberation on 
affairs of state, which do not appertain to 
you; and, what is yet worse, attempt an 
alteration in the state and its govern- 
ment." 

The answer from Holland sustained one 

half of Stuyvesant's declaration that he 

derived his authority " from God and the 

Company " — so far as the Company went, 

" 161 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

his delegated authority was confirmed 
and sustained. But the other half of 
his declaration did not come out so well. 
A decade later his draft on divine power 
was returned dishonored ; and only a turn 
of chance in his favor prevented that 
draft from going to protest within a year. 
The twist of luck that saved him tem- 
porarily was the conclusion of peace 
(April, 1654) between England and Hol- 
land; and the consequent abandonment 
by Cromwell of his project for paci- 
fying the colonial situation — in a breez- 
ily statesman-like fashion — by annexing 
New Netherland out of hand. Actually, 
the Protector's annexation scheme came 
to the very edge of being realized. An 
effective naval force was despatched from 
England; the New England colonies — 
Massachusetts alone lagging a little — 
buzzed with eager preparations for the 
162 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW VORK 

fight that they so longed for; and the 
English colonists on Long Island, de- 
lightedly bustling to the front, made a 
fair start toward the impending revolu- 
tion by declaring their independence of 
Dutch authority and by setting up a 
microscopic government of their own. 
And then, just as everybody (with the 
exception of Director Stuyvesant) was 
ready for things to happen, the peace was 
concluded — and nothing happened at all ! 
But it was only by a very narrow margin 
that the orders for the seizure of New 
Netherland were countermanded before 
New Netherland was seized. 

While the war was imminent New 
Amsterdam was in a whirl. Stuyvesant 's 
mental attitude in the premises seems to 
have bordered upon consternation. In 
regard to practical provision for defence 
he wrote: "We have no gunners, no 
163 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

musketeers, no sailors, and scarcely six- 
teen hundred pounds of powder" — a 
statement that exhibits in rather a start- 
ling fashion the physical unpreparedness 
of the colony for a long- threatened war. 
On its moral side the situation was worse. 
The Director declared that he did not 
expect "the people residing in the coun- 
try, not even the Dutch," to back him 
in the fight that was coming on; and 
added: "The English, although they 
have sworn allegiance, would take up 
arms and join the enemy ... to invite 
them to aid us would be bringing the 
Trojan horse within our walls." 

By the Director's own showing, there- 
fore, it appears that the spirit of loyalty 
in the colony — if such a spirit can be 
said ever to have existed — practically was 
dead, and that the spirit of revolt was 
very much alive. His English subjects 
164 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW fORK 

— almost openly in New Amsterdam, 
quite openly on Long Island — were im- 
patient for the coming of their country- 
men. His Dutch subjects were in a 
state of sulky mutiny that made them 
more than half ready to welcome the 
coming of anybody who would give them 
a new government of any sort — because 
of their moody conviction that any 
change whatever must give them a better 
government than that under which they 
lived. And it all was quite logical. It 
was the natural and inevitable outcome 
of thirty years of consistent misrule. 



XVI 

FOR my present purposes it is need- 
less to treat at all in detail the last 
ten years of the Dutch domination of 
New Netherland. Little concessions con- 
tinued to be made to the colonists; large 
wrongs continued to oppress them; there 
were more "remonstrances"; there was 
an Indian war. Fresh turns produced 
fresh figures in that small kaleidoscope, 
but the constituent elements of the fig- 
ures remained unchanged. The essential 
change came from the outside; and even 
that was but the continued, yet always 
increasing, pressure of those forces which 
had begun to operate (as I have already 
written) before the unstable foundation 
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THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

of the Dutch colony was laid. With the 
steadfast persistence of fate inevitable 
the English grip tightened as the English 
cordon closed in. 

By the year 1659 the eastern end 
of Long Island — surrendered by Stuyve- 
sant under the terms of the Treaty of 
Hartford (1650) — was a vigorous Eng- 
lish colony ; and was manifesting its vigor 
in a characteristic English fashion by 
crowding down into the Dutch territory 
westward of the Oyster Bay line. That 
thrust at close quarters was not easy to 
deal with. Releases of land were ob- 
tained in due form by Englishmen from 
accommodating sachems in temporary 
financial difficulties — or in chronic thirst 
that such transactions in real estate 
would provide means for temporarily 
slaking — and on the land thus obtained 
modest settlements were made. Present- 
167 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

ly, becoming immodest, the settlers of 
those settlements asserted that they were 
under the jurisdiction of Connecticut ; an 
assertion that produced awkward con- 
flicts of authority, no matter how hotly 
it was denied. 

Up in the north, in the back-country, 
Massachusetts was reaching out to tap 
the Dutch fur- trade at its source : calmly 
ignoring the provisions of the Treaty of 
Hartford and claiming as her own all the 
territory between lines running westward 
from three miles south of the Charles 
and three miles north of the Merrimac 
straightaway across the continent to the 
Pacific. The southern line of that hand- 
some claim of everything in sight down 
to sunset crossed the Hudson not far 
from Saugerties; and the kindly inten- 
tion of the claimants was to relieve the 
Dutch of all care of the upper reaches of 
168 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

the river, and incidentally to divert from 
New Amsterdam to Boston the bulk of 
the trade in furs. In presenting the 
matter to Stuyvesant for consideration 
(September 17, 1659) the Commissioners 
shyly urged " we conceive the agreement 
at Hartford, that the English should not 
come within ten miles of Hudson's river, 
doth not prejudice the rights of the 
Massachusetts in the upland country, nor 
give any rights to the Dutch there"; 
upon the strength of which ingenious 
conception they asked that free passage 
from the sea into and through the river 
should be given to the English settlers — 
"they demeaning themselves peaceably, 
and paying such moderate duties as may 
be expected in such cases " — resident 
upon its upper banks. And by way of 
justifying their modest request the Com- 
missioners drew an airy parallel in free 
169 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

international water-ways between the 
Hudson on the one hand and on the 
other the Elbe and the Rhine. It is 
to Stuyvesant's credit that his reply 
(October 29, 1659) to those cheeky Com- 
missioners was a flat refusal ; and that he 
immediately sent off to the Amsterdam 
Chamber — in order to be in a position 
to back his refusal practically — a de- 
mand for "a frigate of sixteen guns." 
That the frigate did not come was a mere 
administrative detail quite in the natural 
order of things. 

By way of completing the English cor- 
don, Lord Baltimore's people were press- 
ing the Dutch from the south. The 
Dutch trading - post on the Delaware 
river — or the South river, as they called 
it — was a losing venture from first to last ; 
and onward from the time (1638) of the 
planting of the Swedish colony on the 
170 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

west shore of the Delaware, on what 
nominally was Dutch territory, the gov- 
ernment of New Netherland was in- 
volved in snarling difficulties in its ef- 
forts to maintain its rights. Before the 
Swedes were reduced to approximate 
order — even after their official conquest 
they continued to give trouble — the much 
more serious trouble with the English 
colonists of Maryland began. 

Those complications were brought to a 
head by the formal demand (August 3, 
1659) addressed by Governor Fendall, 
Lord Baltimore's representative, to "the 
pretended Governor of a people seated 
in Delaware Bay, within his Lordship's 
Province," to "depart forth of his Lord- 
ship's Province " — or to take the conse- 
quences! And Governor Fendall indi- 
cated what the consequences were likely 
to be by adding politely: "or otherwise 
171 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

I desire you to hold me excused if I use 
my utmost endeavour to reduce that part 
of his Lordship's Province unto its due 
obedience under him." The little am- 
bassador who carried the Maryland gov- 
ernor's courteous but peremptory letter 
to the Dutch commandant on the Dela- 
ware delivered it in a " pretty harsh and 
bitter" manner; and emphasized its pur- 
port by remarking incidentally that, "as 
the tobacco is chiefly harvested," the 
people of Maryland were quite at leisure 
for a fight. "It now suits us," he con- 
cluded — in what no doubt was meant to 
be a persuasive spirit — " best in the whole 
year." 

But the sporting offer of the Mary- 
landers to fill in the close season for 
tobacco with a time-killing war did not 
materialize. Their ardor was a little 
cooled, perhaps, by the prompt despatch 
172 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

of reinforcements to the Delaware colony 
from New Amsterdam; and the assertion 
of possession was refuted so logically — 
on the ground that Lord Baltimore's 
patent gave him rights only to unseated 
lands, and therefore excluded him from 
a region colonized by the Dutch at least 
fifteen years before his patent was grant- 
ed — that for the moment their claim was 
shelved. It was by no means quieted, 
however. Until the Dutch were squeezed 
out and done for, the pressure of the 
English upon New Netherland from the 
south was continued with the same per- 
sistence that characterized the pressure 
of the English upon that unlucky colony 
from the east and from the north. There 
was no escape from those advancing ten- 
tacles: behind which, resistless, was the 
power of England. It was a cuttle-fish 
situation that could end in only one way. 

*73 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

The end would have come a trifle 
sooner, no doubt, had the Protector 
lived a little longer or had the Restor- 
ation followed directly upon his death. 
During the interval between September, 
1658, and May, 1660, the domestic tribu- 
lations of the English gave them no time 
to bother about colonial extension : they 
had their hands full of matters requir- 
ing immediate attention at home. But 
when Charles II. resumed business as a 
king the would-be ousters of the Dutch 
in America instantly came to the front 
again. 

Lord Baltimore was at the very head 
of the procession. "Charles had hardly 
reached Whitehall," as Mr. Brodhead 
puts it, "before Lord Baltimore instruct- 
ed Captain James Neale, his agent in 
Holland, to require of the West India 
Company to yield up to him the lands 
174 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

on the south [west] side of Delaware Bay." 
The Earl of Stirling, while less prompt 
than Lord Baltimore, made up for his 
seemly delay by an unseemly insistence. 
In a petition to the King he set forth 
that the " Councell for the affaires of 
New England ... in the eleaventh year 
of the raigne of your Ma ts royall Father 
of blessed memory did graunt unto 
William Earle of Sterlyne, your peti- 
tioner's Grandfather, and his heires, part 
of New England and an Island adja- 
cent called Long Island. . . . That yo r 
Peticoners Grandfather and father, and 
himselfe their heire, have respectively 
enjoyed the same and have at their greate 
costs planted many places on that Isl- 
and; but of late divers Dutch have in- 
truded on severall parts thereof, not ac- 
knowledging themselves within your Ma ts 
allegiance, to your Ma ts disherison and 

i75 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

your Peticoner's prejudice." Wherefore 
he prayed: "May you r Majestie be 
pleased to confirme unto your Peticoner 
his said inheritance to be held imme- 
diately of the Crowne of England, and 
that in any future treaty betweene your 
royall selfe and the Dutch such provision 
may be as that the Dutch there may 
submitt themselves to your Ma t8 gov- 
ernem 1 or depart those parts." Consid- 
ering that the Stirling grant covered 
Dutch territory, his lordship's neatest 
turn is his reference to the intruding 
"divers Dutch"; but there is an air of 
easy assurance about his whole petition 
that does credit to even a Scotch earl. 

To Lord Baltimore's jaunty require- 
ment, cited above, that the West India 
Company should "yield up to him" the 
lands on the west side of Delaware Bay, 
the Directors gave " a proud answer " : to 
176 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

the effect that they "would use all the 
means which God and nature had given 
them to protect the inhabitants and pre- 
serve their possessions. ' ' But they mani- 
fested less pride, and more alarm, in a 
memorial that they promptly addressed 
to the States General : praying that a pro- 
test should be presented by the Dutch 
ambassador in London against English 
aggression ; and that a demand should be 
made for the restoration to New Nether- 
land of the territory that the English 
had "usurped." Under instructions from 
their High Mightinesses, the ambassador 
protested and demanded accordingly: 
and with precisely the same practical re- 
sult that would have followed had he 
protested against the flowing of the 
tides, and had he demanded the cause of 
tidal eccentricities — the moon! 

The Connecticut people, being keen to 
i77 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

assert what they were pleased to call 
their rights, followed close at Lord Stir- 
ling's aggressive heels. Governor Win- 
throp, on behalf of the General Court 
at Hartford, drew up (June 17, 1661) tot 
the King's consideration a "loyal ad- 
dress": that wandered on lightly from 
expressions of loyalty to a specific request 
for a new charter by which his Majesty 
would assure them in possession of their 
territory against the Dutch — whom they 
affably described as " noxious neigh- 
bours," having "not so much as the copy 
of a patent " to the lands which they held. 

That there might be no room for a doubt 
as to what they wanted, they asked in 
set terms for a chartej 1 almly inclusive 
of the unpatented lands of their " noxious 
•> ghbours"- that should cover all the 
country "eastward ol Plymouth line, 
northward to the limits oi the Massachu- 
178 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

setts colony, and westward to the Bay 
of Delaware, if it may be"; and that 
their modest petition might be presented 
properly and urged effectively they com- 
missioned Governor Winthrop as their 
agent to carry it to England and to lay 
it before the King. 

In those days passages across the 
Atlantic were taken where they offered. 
Actually, Winthrop went down to New 
Amsterdam — where he was given an 
"honourable and kind reception" — and 
sailed for England in the Dutch ship 
De Tronw. The Governor was not a 
dull man, and I think that he must 
have enjoyed, in the strict privacy of his 
inner consciousness, the subtle irony of 
the situation : as he courteously accepted 
his " honourable and kind reception " and 
then went sailing eastward under Dutch 
colors — and all the while having in his 
179 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

pocket that document which was meant 
to be a knife in the neck of his hosts at 
New Amsterdam and in the neck of the 
friendly power under whose flag he sailed. 
Had there been a Colonial Office in those 
days, and had Mr. Chamberlain been at 
the head of it, how he would have relished 
the story which that first colonial agent 
would have had to tell him when he got 
to land! 



XVII 

IN a way, the state of affairs in North 
America in the year 1661 was very 
like the state of affairs in South Africa 
just before " Captain Jim " made his raid. 
It all was on a smaller scale, of course, but 
the facts and the conditions were much 
the same. The Dutch were loosely seat- 
ed in a valuable holding; their rule, ar- 
bitrary and corrupt, was resented muti- 
nously by in - crowding greedy English 
settlers who nominally were Dutch sub- 
jects; a belt of English colonies — more 
complete than in South Africa — was 
tightening about them; and at the back 
of all the forces working for their de- 
struction was the English government: 
181 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

moved by the normal human desire to 
take possession of other people's valuable 
property ; and more deeply moved by the 
instinctive feeling (which had no parallel 
in South Africa) that only by crushing 
the commerce of Holland could England 
become the leading commercial nation 
of the world. 

It was against Dutch commerce that 
the blow was struck which led on quickly 
— and I think fortunately — to the ex- 
tinction of the Dutch ownership of New 
Netherland. That blow was the revi- 
sion, very soon after the Restoration, of 
the Navigation Act of 1651. As originally 
framed, the act had forbidden the im- 
portation of goods into England save in 
English ships or in ships belonging to the 
country in which the goods were pro- 
duced. As amended, the act forbade, 
after December 1, 1660, the importation 
182 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

or the exportation of goods into or from 
any of his Majesty's plantations or terri- 
tories in Asia, Africa, or America save in 
English ships of which "the master and 
three fourths of the mariners at least are 
English." 

This direct thrust at the commercial 
life of Holland was not lessened in force 
by the Convention agreed upon (Septem- 
ber 14, 1662) between England and the 
United Provinces ; rather, indeed, did the 
friction over that Convention tend to 
make matters worse. Mr. Brodhead, in 
his kindly way, asserts that " the Dutch 
fulfilled their stipulations with prompt- 
ness and honor"; but, with all due def- 
erence to Mr. Brodhead, the Dutch did 
nothing of the sort — as the minutes of the 
Council for Foreign Plantations abun- 
dantly prove. On August 25, 1662, the 
Council ordered that " some heads of 
1S3 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

remedies " should be drawn up to correct 
the abuses incident to "a secret trade 
driven by and with the Dutch for Tobacco 
of the growth of the English Plantations, 
to the defrauding His Ma tie of his Cus- 
toms and contrary to the intent of the 
Act of Navigation." On June 24, 1663, 
the Council issued a circular letter to the 
governors of Virginia, Maryland, New 
England, and the West Indian Islands, 
drawing their attention to the "many 
neglects, or rather contempts, of his 
Ma ties commands for y e true observ- 
ance" of the Navigation Act "through 
the dayly practices and designes sett on 
foote by trading into forrain parts . . . 
both by land and sea as well as unto y e 
Monadoes and other Plantations of y e 
Hollanders " ; and in an undated docu- 
ment (Trade Papers lvii, 90) giving 
"certaine reasons to prove if the Duch 
184 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

bee admitted trade in Virginia it wilbe 
greate loss to the Kings Ma tie and prej- 
udice to the Plantacon," the fact is 
stated that "there is now two shippes 
going from Zeland to trade there w ch if 
they be admitted it wilbe losse to his 
Ma tie at least 4000", w ch by your Lord- 
shipps wisdome may be prevented." 

All this, with more like it, goes to show 
that the "promptness and honor" of the 
Dutch in living up to the stipulations of 
the Convention left a little to be desired 
on the side of practicality; but it also 
goes to show — since two traders are 
necessary to a trade — that the English 
colonies took an active part in whistling 
the laws of their mother country down 
the wind. This secondary fact is brought 
out with clearness in a report (March 10, 
1663) upon the South, or Delaware, river 
colony, which contains the pregnant as- 
185 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

sertion: "Trade will come not only from 
the City's colony but from the English; 
who offer, if we will trade with them, to 
make a little slit in the door, whereby we 
can reach them overland without hav- 
ing recourse to the passage by sea, lest 
trade with them may be forbidden by 
the Kingdom of England, which will not 
allow us that in their colony." 

In this same report is the statement: 
"The English afford us an instance of 
the worthiness of New Netherland, which 
from their Colony alone already sends 
200 vessels, both large and small, to the 
Islands" — an involved presentment of 
fact that Mr. Brodhead misunderstands, 
and in his restatement of it perverts into 
meaning that the trade of New Nether- 
land "with the West Indies and the 
neighbouring English colonies now [1663] 
employed two hundred vessels annually." 
186 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

Obviously, the two hundred vessels re- 
ferred to in the report hailed from Eng- 
lish colonial ports; and they are cited to 
show the "worthiness" — that is to say, 
the fitness — of New Netherland to take 
a larger share in the intercolonial trade. 
But the essential fact is clear that the 
many busy little ships then plying in 
American waters, Dutch and English 
alike, were snapping their top-sails at the 
Navigation Act, and that a deal of illegal 
trading was going on through that " little 
slit in the door. ' ' Mr. Brodhead — in this 
case with absolute correctness — sum- 
marizes the situation: "The possession 
of New Netherland by the Dutch was, in 
truth, the main obstacle to the enforce- 
ment of the restrictive colonial policy 
of England." And the obstacles which 
stood in the way of England's colonial 
policy in those days — there is no very 
187 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

marked change in these days — had to go 
down. 

The final diplomatic round between 
England and Holland began in January 
1664, when the Dutch ambassador in 
London was directed to insist upon a 
ratification by the British government 
of the long-pending Hartford Treaty ; and 
so, by a definite settlement of the boun- 
dary question, clear the air. The answer 
to the Dutch demand certainly did settle 
the boundary question, and certainly did 
clear the air. It came two months later 
(March 12-22) in the shape of that epoch- 
making royal patent by which the King 
granted Long Island (released by the 
Earl of Stirling) and all the lands and 
rivers from the west side of the Connect- 
icut to the east side of Delaware Bay 
to his brother, the Duke of York. 

The actual conquest of New Nether- 




" Tin; duke's 

(Photographed for this work from the original in the British Musei: 




I -3 N I Y lV . {g H , 

', ' 1661-1664 

howing New Amsterdam in the year that it became New York) 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

land by the force sent out by the Duke 
of York to take possession of his newly 
acquired property, as I have written else- 
where, was "a mere bit of bellicose 
etiquette: a polite changing of garrisons, 
of fealty, and of flags"; and by way of 
comment upon that easy shifting of 
allegiance I farther have written in these 
general terms: "Under the government 
of the Dutch West India Company, the 
New Netherland had been managed not 
as a national dependency, but as a com- 
mercial venture which was expected to 
bring in a handsome return. Much more 
than the revenue necessary to maintain a 
government was required of the colonists ; 
and at the same time the restrictions im- 
posed upon private trade — to the end 
that the trade of the Company might be 
increased — were so onerous as materially 
to diminish the earning power of the 
189 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

individual, and correspondingly to make 
the burden of taxation the heavier to 
bear. Nor could there be between the 
colonists and the Company — as there 
could have been between the colonists 
and even a severe home government — a 
tie of loyalty. Indeed, the situation had 
become so strained under this commercial 
despotism that the inhabitants of New 
Amsterdam almost openly sided with the 
English when the formal demand for a 
surrender was made — and the town pass- 
ed into British possession, and became 
New York, without the striking of a 
single blow." 



XVIII 

ON the side of ethics, the taking over 
of New Netherland by the English 
admits of differing opinions. Mr. Brod- 
head flat-footedly calls it " bold robbery." 
Dr. Asher, himself a Dutchman, regards 
it as the occupation by the English of 
territory that was theirs by right of dis- 
covery, of settlement, and of specific 
grant. For my own part — lacking the 
temerity to pass judgment upon so vexed 
a question — I am content to ignore the 
ethical side of that easy conquest and to 
ground my approval of it on the fact that, 
as things then stood in Europe and in 
America, it was the only practicable 
treatment of an impossible problem; to 
191 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

which, with submission, I add my con- 
viction that for all the parties in interest 
it was the best substitute for a solution 
possible under the conditions which ob- 
tained. 

The gain to England was so obvious 
that it need not be discussed. The gain 
to Holland was getting rid of a nettle of 
a colony which — by involving her in an 
outlay of more than a million guilders 
above returns, and by most dangerously 
complicating her relations with her most 
powerful rival — from first to last did little 
but sting her hands. The gain to the 
English colonies in America was an im- 
mediate enlargement of intercolonial 
trade: with a resultant solidarity of in- 
terests which strongly helped — a little 
more than a century later — to bring about 
their formal union and their definite in- 
dependence. The gain to New Nether- 
192 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

land — the essential matter here to be 
considered — was escape from a harsh and 
incompetent government, that crushed 
trade and that did much to make life 
unendurable, to the fostering care of a 
government that developed trade in ev- 
ery direction and that in its treatment 
of individuals erred on the side of 
laxness. 

Out of that laxness came ill results. 
That the morals of New Amsterdam did 
not improve under English rule is not 
surprising — because New Amsterdam had 
no morals. On the other hand, its im- 
morals — of which its supply was exces- 
sive — developed vigorously, in sympathy 
with its vigorously developing commercial 
life. In the last decade of the seven- 
teenth century — what with our pirates 
and our slavers and the general disposi- 
tion on the part of our leading citizens to 

13 193 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

ride a hurdle race over all known laws, 
including the Ten Commandments — New 
York certainly was as vicious a little sea- 
faring city as was to be found just then in 
all Christendom. But the fact is to be 
borne in mind that the evil state of af- 
fairs which developed under English gov- 
ernment was put an end to by an English 
governor. And the farther fact is to be 
borne in mind that onward from the time 
of that first reform governor there has 
been in this town — as there conspicuous- 
ly was not in this town during the Dutch 
period of its history— at least an avowed 
outward respect for decency and for law. 
I do not assert, of course, that this ad- 
mirable sentiment has shone brilliantly 
or steadfastly, or that it is not badly 
snowed under at times even now; but I 
do assert that until we came under Eng- 
lish rule such sentiment practically did 
194 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

not exist at all. Lord Bellomont was the 
first of our governors — and this is not to 
cast a slight upon the excellent reor- 
ganizing work of Colonel Nicolls — who 
forced us to put some of our worst 
sins behind us, and so set us in the 
way (along which we still are flounder- 
ing) to achieve that civic rectitude which 
was an unknown virtue in the Dutch 
times. 

Having thus, for truth's sake, set forth 
the development and the curbing of our 
immorals which followed our taking on 
of a new nationality, I am free to make 
my final point — the enormous gain in 
material prosperity — in favor of that 
shifting of ownership which changed New 
Amsterdam into New York. When the 
English took over the city (September 8, 
1664) the number of houses in it — as 
shown by Cortelyou's survey of the year 

195 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

1660 — was about 350, and the population 
was about 1500 souls. An authoritative 
record has been preserved — in the petition 
of the New York millers and merchants 
against the repeal of the Bolting Act — 
of exactly what this city gained in its 
first thirty years of English rule. The 
petition states that in the year 1678, when 
the Bolting Act became operative, the 
total number of houses in New York was 
384; the total number of beef-cattle 
slaughtered was 400; the total number 
of sailing craft (3 ships, 7 boats, 8 
sloops) was 18; and the total revenues 
of the city were less than £2000. The 
petition farther states that in the year 
1694 (there is a secondary interest here, 
in that we see what the added two 
centuries have done for us) the num- 
ber of houses had increased to 983; 
the number of beef - cattle slaughtered 
196 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

(largely for profitable export to the 
West Indies) to 4000; the number of 
sailing craft (60 ships, 40 boats, 25 
sloops) to 125; and the city's revenues 
to ^5000. 

That statement of fact I conceive to 
be the most striking commentary that 
can be made upon the relative material 
merits of Dutch and of English rule. The 
sudden prodigious increase of the popu- 
lation and of the commerce of this city 
equally were due to a general easement of 
political and of commercial conditions: 
the first impossible while the Dutch 
domination continued; and the second 
rigorously withheld (of set purpose or 
of set stupidity) during the four decades 
that the West India Company betrayed 
all the interests of New Netherland in 
order to gain — yet failed to gain — its 
own selfish ends. I hope that we may 
197 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

be able to make as good a showing in the 
Philippines at the end of our first thirty 
years. 

But argument for or against that bold 
robbery, or that resumption of vested 
rights — as our two most authoritative 
historians, with a somewhat confusing 
divergence of opinion, respectively de- 
scribe the English acquisition of New 
Netherland — no longer is necessary. As 
I have written, that once burning ques- 
tion became a dead issue in a time long 
past. Whatever were the equities of the 
conflicting Dutch and English claims to 
the most valuable slice of the continent 
of North America, they were quieted 
legally by the Treaty of Breda. And 
they have been quieted ethically — in the 
flowing of the years since that remote 
diplomatic agreement was executed — by 
198 



THE DUTCH FOUNDING OF NEW YORK 

the passage of the property in dispute 
away from both claimant races into the 
possession of their descendants : who have 
coalesced into a new race, and who take 
their title from themselves. 



INDEX 



PAGE 



Africa, South, comparison with, 181 

Alabama, Confederate cruiser, 32 

Albany, lobbying at, 23, 39 

"Strikes" at, 26 

Antwerp, commerce of, destroyed, ^^ 

Archangel, Russian port, 7 

Armada, the, 64 

Arms of Amsterdam, cargo of, 1626, 85 

Arms of New York, 12, 58 

Arms for Indians, Barent sells, 100 

Confiscated, 99 

Patroons sell, 69 

Public sentiment about, 100 

Trade in, 98 

Van Rensselaer deals in, 99 

West India Company responsible for, 101 

Asher, life of Hudson by, 44 

On collapse of West India Company, 119 

On Count John Maurice, 115 

On Dutch title to New Netherland, 42 

On English conquest of N. Netherland, 191 

201 



INDEX 

PAGE 

Bahia captured, 60 
Baltimore, Lord, territorial claims of, 170, 174 

Barent sells arms to Indians, 100 

Barneveldt, execution of, 35, 44 

Opposes West India Company, 33 
Baxter, George, drafts remonstrance, 1653, 156 

Leader of rebellion, 1655, 97 

Official interpreter, 95, 97 
Baxter, Thomas, builds Wall St. palisadoes, 122 

Piracies of, 126 

Beaver in civic arms, 58 

Belgian refugees in Holland, 30, 33 

Bellomont, Lord, character of, no 

Reforms by, 195 

Blake, Admiral, 122 

Block, Adrien, commands Tiger, 13 

Discoveries of, 16 
"Blood from King of Spain's heart," 63 

Bogardus, daughter married, 81 

Bolting Act, the, of 1698, 196 

Reference to, 59 

"Bosch-lopers," 99 
"Boss" and city charter synchronous, 142 

Bout signs remonstrance, 1649, 76 

Brazil, colony in, 115 

Conquests in, 60 

Evacuated, 1654, 118 
202 



INDEX 

PAGE 

Breda, Treaty of, 44, 198 

Bridgman, Orlando, 49 

Brodhead, collector of documents, 2 

On city charter, 140 

On Dutch title to New Netherland, 42 

On English conquest of N. Netherland, 191 

Buzzard's Bay, 17 

"Captain Jim's" raid, 181 

Carleton, Sir Dudley, 53 

Chamberlain, Mr., 53, 180 

Charter, city, Brodhead on, 140 

Granted to New Amsterdam, 1653, 139 

Of liberties and exemptions, 1640, 94 

Stuyvesant proclaims, 140 

West India Company, granted, 162 1, 45 

Christiansen, Hendrick, 13 

Church, dissatisfaction with, 80 

Subscriptions to, 81 

City Tavern built, 1642, 96 

Civic rectitude unknown, 195 

Coenties Slip, 96 

Colonial discontent, nature of, 83 

Commissioners of New England, 124 

Congo Protectorate, 8, 72 

Connecticut sends loyal address to King, 178 

Territorial claims of, 178 

203 



INDEX 

PAGE 

Connecticut river (Fresh Water), 18 

Convention of 1653, 151 

Frames remonstrance, 156 

How organized, 155 

Opposed by Stuyvesant, 154 

Couwenhoven signs remonstrance, 1649, 7 6 

Cromwell, death of, 174 

Plans annexation of New Netherland, 162 

Custom-house, new, 13 

Delaware river, see South river, 

De Vries, D. P., his opinion of the English, 89 

Honesty of, 73 

Stiffens Van Twiller's backbone, 89 

Director General, official title of Governor, 70 

"Door, little slit in the," 186 

Dutch colonists, characteristics of, 2, 9, 72 

Disloyalty of, 164 

"Noxious neighbours," 178 

Dutch somnolence a myth, 4, 9, 14, 27, 46 

Dyck, H. van, on Van Tienhoven, 144 

Dyer and Underhill, piracies of, 126 

East India Company, purpose of, 47 

Eendracht, case of the ship, 91 

Elbertsen signs remonstrance, 1649, 76 

England, peace with Holland, 1654, 162 
204 



INDEX 

PAGE 

England protests planting of N. Netherland, 53 

War with Holland, 1652, 122 

English claim to New Netherland, 45 

Colonists call convention, 152 

Dissatisfied, 152 

Revolt of, 163 

Conquest of New Netherland, ethics of, 191 

Cordon around New Netherland, 167 

Grant covering New Netherland, 52 

In New Amsterdam, 1642, 95 

On Long Island rebel, 97 

Ship, first, in Hudson river, 88 

Refused trading license, 88 

Exports from New Netherland, 85, 86 

From New York, 1678, 1694, 195 

Fendall, Gov., claims South river colony, 171 

Feudalism in America, 68 

"Figurative Map, the," 20, 41 

Flushing, delegates from, 153 

Fort Leavenworth, comparison with, 108 

Fort, the, site of, 13 

Fraunces's Tavern, 16 

Fresh Water (Connecticut river), 18 

Fur trade, Dutch, with Russia, 6 

At Manhattan, 8, 85 

Values of peltries, 86 

205 



INDEX 

PAGE 

George III., our feeling toward, 84 

Gravesend, delegates from, 153 



Hague, The, lobbying at, 22, 39 

Hall signs remonstrance, 1649, 76 

Hardenburg signs remonstrance, 1649, 7 6 

Hartford, Treaty of, granted too much, 132 

Ignored by Massachusetts, 168 

Ratification of, demanded, 188 

Heermans, A., and Van Tienhoven, 148 

Signs remonstrance, 1649, 76 

Hell Gate, Onrust goes through, 17 

Hendricksen, Cornelis, 17, 19 

Heyn, Admiral Peter, 61 

Holland, peace with England, 1654, 162 

Political parties in, 34 

Protests against English aggression, 177 

Truce with Spain, 1609, 34 

War with England, 1652, 122 

Hongers, Hans, 40 

Hoogvelt, Lysbet van, 145 

Houses in New York, 1664-78-94, 195 

Hudson, Henry, death of, 6 

Discoveries of, 4 

Life of, by Asher, 44 

Report on fur trade by, 7 

Hudson river called Mauritius, 13 

206 



INDEX 

PAGE 

Hudson river, Discovery of, 4 

Massachusetts claims passage of, 169 

Indian war of 1643, 7 1 

Effects of, 103 

Indians, arms sold to, 69, 98 

Land grants from, 167 

Sale of liquor to, forbidden, 109 

Intercolonial trade, circa 1635, 1642, 88, 95 

Illicit, 184 

Interpreter, official, 1642, 95 

Irving, misrepresentations of, 1, 105, 132 

Jacobsen, C, commands the Fortune, 13 

Jansen signs remonstrance, 1649 76 

Johannesberg, 72 

Kampen, Joan van, 135 
Kieft, Wm., Director General, 1638-46, 70 

An ex-bankrupt, 70 
Arraigned in remonstrance of 1649, 79 

Church built by, 81 

Death of, 71 

Liberal government of, 95 

Portrait hung on gallows, 70 

Provokes Indian war, 71 

Steals ransom money, 71 
207 



INDEX 



PAGE 



Kieft welcomes refugees from N. England, 95 

Worst of all the Directors, 70 

Kip signs remonstrance, 1649, 76 

Kruger, President, 72 

Land grants from Indians, 167 

Unfairly made, 158 

Liberties and exemptions, charter of, 94 

Lobbying at The Hague, 22, 38 

Long Island claimed by Lord Stirling, 175 

English on, 1659, 167 

Granted to Duke of York, 188 

Granted to Lord Stirling, 175 

Released by Lord Stirling, 188 

Loockermans signs remonstrance, 1649, 7 6 

Lothair, of Congo Protectorate, 72 

Loyalty non-existent, 164 

Manhattan Island bought, 85 

Settlement on, 54 

Manifest, first ship's, 86 

"Map, the Figurative," 20, 41 

Maryland, trouble with, 171 

Marylanders' sporting offer, 172 

Massachusetts, pacific acts of, 127, 128, 129, 137 

Territorial claims of, 168 

Maurice, Count John, 115 

208 



INDEX 

PAGE 

Mauritius (Hudson) river, 13 

May-day movings, 57 

May, first Director General, 70 

Milner, Sir Alfred, 53 

Nahant (Pye Bay), 17, 18 

Narragansett Bay, 17 

Navigation Act ofi65i, 121 

Of 1660, 182 

Evasion of, 184 

Negroes, permission to import, 133 

New Amsterdam becomes New York, 190 

City charter granted, 1653, 139 

English in, 1642, 95 

First permanent colonists of, 57 

Founded, 50 

Immorals of, 193 

In war time, 1652, 122 

Named, 56 

Ordered to be made clean, no 

New England commissioners, 124 

Confederation, 1643, 124 

Desire in, to fight the Dutch, 125, 128, 162 

Early trade with New Netherland, 87, 90 

New Netherland, an obstacle to England, 187 

Condition of, in 1624, 85 

Condition of, in 1629, 66 

14 209 



INDEX 

PAGE 

New Netherland, condition of, in 1647, io 3 

Condition of, in 1649, 77, 108 

Condition of, in 1653, 157 

Condition of, in 1654, 163 

Condition of, circa 1660, 113 

Condition of, in 166 1, 181 

Cromwell's plan for annexing, 162 

Dutch title to, 42 

Early trade with New England, 87, 90 

Easy conquest of, 186 

English claim to, 45, 52 

Erected into a province, 58 

Ethics of English conquest of, 191 

Exports from, 1624, 85 

Exports from, 1628-1635, 86 

First official use of name, 41 

Forces destructive to, 113, 120, 187 

Good results of English rule, 195 

Granted to Duke of York, 188 

Limits defined, 16 16, 19 

Not named in W. I. Co. charter, 51 

Price of passage to, reduced, 133 

Population of, in 1629, 67 

Results of English conquest of, 192 

Unprepared for war, 1654, 163 

Company chartered, 40 

Directors of, 19 
210 



INDEX 

PAGE 

New Netherland Company, members of, 40 

Newtown, delegates from, 153 

New York, arms of, 12, 58 

Benefited by English rule, 195 

Lawlessness of, 1 690-1 700, 193 

Pirates, 193 

Reformed by Lord Bellomont, 195 

Statistics of, 1664, 1678, 1694, 195 

Nicholas, Saint, patron of New York, 105 

Onrust, yacht, built, 12, 13 

Discoveries made in, 16, 19 

Goes through Hell Gate, 17 

Monument to, 15 

Orange, House of, a rallying centre, 34 

Oyster Bay line, 167 

Passage, price of, to N. Netherland reduced, 133 

Patroons, grants to, 68 

Relics of feudalism, 68 

Sell arms to Indians, 69 

Peace of 1654, Holland and England, 162 

Pelgrom, Paulus, 19, 40 

Pernambuco captured, 60 

Petition of Lord Stirling to Charles II., 175 

Pilot who dared all for love, 91 

Piracies on Long Island Sound, 126, 153, 154 

211 



INDEX 

PAGE 

Pirates of New York, 193 

Placard encouraging discovery, 20, 21, 24 

Planters' Plea, The, 66 

Plymouth Company, grant to, 52 

Population of New Netherland in 1629, 67 

Pye Bay (Nahant), 17, 18 



Raef, Sebastien, piracies of, 




*35 


Rebellion on Long Island, 1655, 




97 


Refugees from Belgium, 


3c 


>. 33 


From New England, 




95 


"Rehoboam, the crowning of," 




no 


Remonstrance of 1649, 




75 


Author of, 




76 


On Stuyvesant, 




105 


On Van Tienhoven, 




!43 


Signers of, 




76 


Tone of, 




81 


Remonstrance of 1653, 




155 


Author of, 




156 


Rejected by West India Company, 


160 


Resented by Stuyvesant, 




160 


Tone of, 




159 


Remonstrances, various, 


94, 


166 


Restoration, the, 




174 


Revenues of New York, 1678, 1 


694, 


195 


Rhode Island, disrepute of, 




126 



212 



INDEX 

PAGE 

Russia, Dutch trade with, 6 



Salem, teacher of church at, 128 

Santiago, battle of, 64 

Schout, duties of, 142 

Ship Arms 0} Amsterdam, 85 

Eendracht, case of the, 91 

English, refused trading license, 88 

First, built on Manhattan, 11 

First English, in Hudson river, 88 

First trading, at Manhattan, 8 

Tiger burned, 13 

Shipping of New York, 1678, 1694, 195 

Ships, how built, 14 

"Slate," the first, 141 

Slave trade, beginning of, 133 

"Slit in the door, little," 186 

Smuggling, remonstrance 1649, 78 

Stuyvesant tries to check, 109 

South river colony, 170 

Claimed by Maryland, 171, 172, 174 

Illicit trade with, 185 

Swedish colony on, 131, 170 

Spain, colonial weakness of, 30 

King of, blood from heart of, 63 

Oppression of, ^^ 

Poor fighter at sea, 64 

213 



INDEX 

PAGE 

Spain's truce with Holland, 1609, 34, 35 

Ends, 1621, 44 

Spanish colonies, trade with, 133 

Sporting offer of Marylanders, 172 

Stadt Huys built, 1642, 96 

Convention of 1653 held in, 151 

State rights, doctrine of, 129 

States General, placard of 1614, 21 

West India Company before, 37 

Statute of Uses circumvented, 48 

Stirling, Lord, claims Long Island, 175 

Petition of, 175 

Releases Long Island, 188 

Stockton's "Great War Syndicate," 32 

Stuyvesant, Peter, Direc. Gen., 1647-64, 103 

Bad domestic policy of, 137 

Characteristics of, 105, 11 1 

Charged with inciting Indian rising, 124 

Concludes conventions with Virginia, 133 

Derives his power "from God and 

the Company," 160, 161 

Fosters foreign trade, 136 

Good foreign policy of, 124, 131, 136 

Ineffective as a reformer, 1 1 1 

Irving's caricature of, 105 

Lays tax on wines and liquors, no 

Makes the first "slate," 141 
214 



INDEX 

PAGE 

Stuyvesant, P., opposes convention of 1653, 154 

Orders town to be made clean, no 

Proclaims city charter, 140 

Reduces Swedish colony, 131 

Reforms attempted by, 109 

Resents remonstrance of 1653, 160 

Temporizing policy of, 98 

Terms offered by, to New England, 125 

Sunset, claim down to, 168 

Swedish colony founded, 1638, 170 

Reduced, 1655, 131 

Tammany methods in 1653, 141, 150 

Tavern, the City, built, 1642, 96 

Tax laid on wines and liquors, no 

Tienhoven, Adriaen van, detected in fraud, 150 



Cornelis van, character of, 


*43 


Made schout, 


142 


Seduces Lysbet van Hoogvelt, 


MS 


Tobacco, close season for, 


172 


Export tax on, removed, 


I 33 


Secret trade in, 


184 


Trade hampered, remonstrance 1649, 


77 


In 1624, 


85 


Intercolonial, circa 1635, 


88 


Circa 1642, 


95 


England objects to, 


88, 90 


215 





INDEX 

PAGE 

Trade, intercolonial, illicit, 184 

Made easier, 1640, 94 

Secret, in tobacco, 184 

With drunken savages, 109 

With Spanish colonies, 133 

With West Indies, 197 

Wrangles over the American, 27 

Treasure fleet captured, 60 

Treaty of Hartford granted too much, 132 

Ignored by Massachusetts, 168 

Ratification demanded, 188 

Trojan Horse, the, 164 

Tromp, Admiral van, 122 

Truce, the twelve years', 34. 44 

Tweenhuyzen, Lambrecht van, 19, 40 

Underhill and Dyer, piracies of, 126 

United Colonies of New England, the, 124 

Uses, statute of, circumvented, 48 

Usselincx, William, 3° 

Van Cortlandt signs remonstrance, 1649, 7 6 

Van der Douck drafts remonstrance, 1649, 76 

Van Rensselaer deals in arms for Indians, 99 
Van Twiller drives out English trading ship, 89 

Verhulst, second Director General, 7° 

Virginia, conventions with, 133 
216 



INDEX 



Virginia, trade with, 
Visscher, schipper, 
Vries, see De Vries. 



123 



Walloon colonists, 57 

Wall Street palisadoes, 122 
War between Holland and England, 1652, 122 

Indian, of 1643, 7 1 

West India Company, the, 29 

Answer to Lord Baltimore, 176 

Arraigned, 1649, 77 

Before States General, 37 

Captures treasure fleet, 60 

Causes of its collapse, 114 

Chartered, 45 

Conquests in Brazil, 60 

Inquiry into affairs of, 1638, 94 
Memorial against English aggression, 177 

Naval strength of, 62 

No precedent for, 48 

Opposed by Barneveldt, ^3 

Organized to make war, 47 

Rapacity of, 189 

Rejects remonstrance of 1653, 160 

Remonstrates against truce, 62 

Report on New Netherland, 1629, 60 

Rights and obligations of, 45 
217 



2. IX 



— 27 



INDEX 



THE END 



l<4 ' 



PAGE 



West India Co., selfish policy of, a failure, 197 

War winnings of, 61 

Writes to Burgomasters and Scl\epens, 161 

West Indies, illicit trade with, 184 

Trade with, 88, 197 

Windmill in the Fort, 80 

Wines and liquors taxed, no 

Winthrop, Gov., drafts address to King, 178 

Goes in Dutch ship to England, 179 

Kindly received at New Amsterdam, 170 

Witssen, Gerrit Jacob, 19 

Jonas, 19 

Wooley, Charles, cited, 86 

York, Duke of, grant to, 188 






1?y/&s\ 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

II I! 1 I 



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